


50 Kisses

by FloraOne



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: 50 kisses tumblr prompt, Catalyst universe/narrative, Episode: e22 Romance Under the Moon: Usagi's First Kiss, Episode: e64 In Search of the Silver Crystal: Chibi-Usa's Secret, Episode: e90 Premonition of the Apocalypse: The Mysterious New Guardians Appear, Episode: e93 Usagi's Idol: The Graceful Genius Michiru, Evil Endymion, F/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Stars, Sailor Moon R, Sailor Moon S, Sailor Moon Sailor Stars, Silver Millennium Era, Stars, break up arc, moments jumping throughout canon and beyond, no beta we die like men, sailor moon super s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2020-12-07 13:21:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 55
Words: 50,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20976560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloraOne/pseuds/FloraOne
Summary: Series of 50 short coffee break ficlets jumping through canon, written with the 50 Kisses prompt list on Tumblr, posted in order of the prompts. All surrounding kisses are set throughout canon. Anything from break-up arc to post-stars.





	1. His Good Morning Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> So, the people who follow me on tumblr already know half of these, and can guess what's coming lol. A while back I did an ask game on tumblr, writing kisses to a prompt list of 50 different kisses, everything from kisses because the world is ending to kisses out of envy or jealousy. I started that game as tumblr ficlets only, challenging myself to do them quickly and not overtly question myself or my writing. And I've built up a few, and now I want to finish them. Although a few people kept asking wether or not I'll post them outside of tumblr, and I always just said maybe. So, the reason I'm doing it after all mostly is because I decided to write all of them, and it'll be quite a bit lol. But, as I said, more than half is already done. (Which also means for some of you only half of this is new – sorry!)
> 
> Anyway, I'll post on weekdays. They're all short ficlets, the majority below a 1000 words - tiny coffee break reads meant to brighten your day a little! (Or give it a tiny jab of painful ANGST sometimes lol.)
> 
> Because they're so short and sometimes you just want to read something small set in your favorite season, I've decided to categorize every kiss with a setting. They're added to the BOTTOM ANs, and if you want to specifically scroll for the content you want, you can find it down there after every post.
> 
> Some are fluffy, some are atrocious, and they're all supposed to fit into canon more or less. (Less on Silmil, I confess, most of those easily CAN fit into canon, but they're often a tad closer to my Catalyst universe.) Anyway, in general, you can read them as kisses scattered and jumping through time. You'll encounter anything from Season 1 kisses to post-stars kisses.
> 
> Also: these are unbeta-ed. I wanted to challenge myself to just write and post and not over-edit and overthink. To create content without stressing over it, and to do it quickly. This includes not throwing daily content at my beta. So, this means, you will find mistakes. It's not gonna be perfect. And keep in mind I'm German – English isn't my first language. If a few mistakes bother you, you have been warned, and can back-button now.
> 
> I hope you enjoy them, however, and would love to hear your thoughts around these small lip-locked moments!

50 Kisses  
Coffee Break Ficlets

* * *

His Good Morning Kiss

* * *

Some days it was almost ok. Some days he didn't see her at all and could almost forget his loss. And really, it wasn't so bad, was it? They'd barely started. They'd barely had a chance to be - so it shouldn't hurt so much that they would never be anything now. He'd barely gotten to know her yet, even.

Sometimes, he could make himself believe that. A little. That numb feeling was better than the searing pain he felt when he saw her eyes… Her eyes were always sad, these days. Even when he felt he'd given everything just to ensure they wouldn't be.

Other days were open torture. Days where time dragged like thick syrup sticking in his lungs. Days in which he had to swallow the adoration that seemed to mount with every day apart and had to scowl at her instead. When he was the cause that her sad eyes had turned into the default.

She'd worn barrettes in her odangos. Little bows attached at the end of each. Later, staring sleepless at his ceiling with pebbles in his throat and her image in the shadows, he'd determined they'd been the color of the morning sky - not quite baby blue, not quite light grey. She'd looked like cotton candy. Like dew drops on a flower, like steaming cocoa and wool blankets when it rained outside, like a soft smile that shone through the eyes, real and private. Like all the things happiness must taste like, but he was not invited.

No matter how his days were, his nights were always worse.

The nightmares were painful. They woke him up gasping and screaming and with stuttering heartbeats and they always showed the same. Their wedding day, her lifeless eyes right after, that dreaded voice making all the sense in the world even if it ripped his spine out through his mouth. Of course he wasn't good for her. How could he have ever fooled himself that he would be worthy of that soft smile, of cotton candy and the color of the morning sky?

And yet it wasn't the nightmares that haunted him most, but the times he didn't sleep at all. The times he lay awake and his self-sabotaging asshole of a mind lacked the self-control to not imagine what it might be like if he were allowed to be happy, his begging heart enslaved.

If he'd been allowed to get to know her. If he'd been allowed to keep her. If he'd been allowed to learn from his mistakes.

He imagined what it might have been like if he hadn't been such a jerk to her from the start. Or if maybe, he'd been born just about 3 measly years later, and perhaps ended up in her class, and they'd gotten to know each other in a way where he might not have been so awful to her. He imagined what it might have been like if (during the few months the universe had cheated him on, in which he was alive and she was too, and yet she'd fought without him against two aliens), just _if, _maybe, he could have been allowed to remember. If through Snow White plays and VR arcades and babysitting ventures, he'd known how important it was to open his eyes and see. Or if, earlier than that, he'd been a little quicker at Starlight Tower and not gotten himself killed. What it might have been like if he'd looked at Usagi and seen Sailor Moon and if he'd had the chance to really fight by her side, grow to know her that way.

Or if he'd never gotten these awful premonitions of her death by his fault, and could walk into Crown, take her hand and lead her away from judgemental eyes, lead her out to his motorcycle and have her hug her small, perfect hands around him as he whisked her away and just kept her anyway. Even if he was a jerk and cotton candy was too good for him.

When she tilted her head that little bit and wrinkled her nose in that cute smile and rested her chin on her fist and looked at him in the way that flayed him raw and bared his soul and made him burst into tears even just thinking about it, because he wanted it so much. He wanted that smile so, so much.

And wasn't it all so eerily familiar? He remembered a different life where he'd done the very same. Years spent staring at a ceiling and imagining what might be - even when it had never been allowed to be. He'd dreamt and dreamt of days where he could see the sun reflect in her hair without guilt and worry and fear, where he could keep this smile that shone when she was allowed to stand barefoot in the soil and drag her hands through the dirt; had hoped his heart raw, and had hoped until the very last moment in the flames of the Moon Palace, clutching her hand, that he might still get what he so desperately, foolishly wanted after all.

Barrettes in her hair with bows the color of the morning sky. Scraped knees and that beaming, angel smile, until she'd turn and smirk and do something viciously, idiotically stupid, and he'd love her even more.

He'd lie in his bed and stare at his ceiling through the tears, and he'd imagine how it would be to take her hand, be stupid together, and never let go. What it would be like to not step away when she hugged him in the rain, in her grass green raincoat and her bleeding heart. What it would be like to chauffeur her through Tokyo on his bike and not anyone else. To cook curry with her and hold her hand instead of shoving her away. What it would be like to feel that perfect, happy smile on him just once more, and then maybe again, and maybe, just maybe, again after that.

And then his trainwreck heart whispered that maybe it was all a lie. Maybe the nightmares weren't real. Maybe the world wasn't so cruel after all, and it had all been some big, cosmic misunderstanding. Maybe he could walk out of here and wait in front of the steps of her school and tell her it was all over. Maybe he could repent, start trying to be worthy. Maybe he could give her a good morning kiss and later a kiss goodnight, and do it again the next day, and the day after that, and she'd stand on the tips of her toes and press that soft smile right against his lips until the day he died. Maybe tomorrow, someone would come and tell him it had all just been to test him. That he did good; that he could stop now.

Those nights were the worst. Where he couldn't stop hoping, like Endymion before him, and he'd blink red, raw, cried-out eyes into the rising sun behind his window, and then turn and lie awake staring at her photo with the broken frame on his bedside until he needed to slip his mask back into place.

It was another night like that, and the sun was long awake, and he sighed deeply and sat up, the photo in his hand.

He was careful this time - he'd cut himself on the broken glass too often - and pressed his lips against the frame with closed eyes.

"Good morning, Usako," he whispered against her photo.

Then he got up and pretended to function.

* * *

_So here's the first one! Reviews are love and feed me ;)_

_Here's the selfexplanatory setting for those scrolling for it:_   
_Setting: R_


	2. A Kiss Goodnight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This kiss is one of those that people tumblr will already know. But maybe you enjoy it anyway ;) Let me know what you think!

* * *

A Kiss Goodnight

* * *

"Finally!" Usagi yelped into her phone, hitting her feet against the mattress and her purple bunnies-and-moons comforter with a big fat pout. "Why didn't you call me sooner?!"

She'd only heard radio silence from Mamoru for like, the _whole day_ and it had been driving her insane! Understandably, she'd been on the phone complaining to the girls non-stop about it.

"I TRIED. The line was busy all day! ! Who did you keep calling?!"

Usagi blinked, sat up straight in her bed with flushing cheeks.

"You were griping about me with the girls again, weren't you?"

She flushed even more. "I don't gripe about you."

"Uh-huh."

"Besides," she said, crossing her pj-clad legs, "you could have texted me."

"I didn't have reception in the library," Mamoru said, voice apologetic.

Usagi deflated, flopped back on her bed, and cradled her Tuxedo Mask doll close while pressing her phone to her ear even closer. "I miss you." She pouted into her phone and the pillow against her cheek. "I didn't get a goodnight kiss in _two_ days now."

She jumped about a mile high in her bed when his reply echoed through her room and not only her phone.

"One day," he corrected, lifting his second leg over her windowsill and slipping into her room while pressing the end call button on his phone.

She blinked at him in surprise and he threw her a wink before sitting on the edge of her bed and bending over to remove his shoes.

She shrieked in joy, dropping both her phone and her Tux doll blindly as she tackled his back.

He chuckled, straightened, half-turned rather awkwardly and pressed a kiss to her temple, then smirked harder when her hands pulled on him to get him fully on her bed.

She didn't have to voice the 'what are you doing here,' instead he just lifted his arm and she cradled herself into his side and he answered her unasked question anyway.

"I didn't know if I would reach you _this_ time," he told her with a judgementally lifted eyebrow, and she huffed. "And your house is on my way home."

One of his lips quirked up and he bent over and captured her pout with his lips. She sighed happily, grabbing onto his shirt to pull him down on her more fully. In a show of care, he stemmed his elbow against her mattress, trying to not crush her, and trying to prevent her from crushing herself via his body weight, but she just pulled even harder on him, lips moving almost lazily and utterly content against his.

She hummed against his lips when he released her with a small pop and his tongue poking out to run over his bottom lip where her teeth had just graced him, his eyes slower to re-open, and she melted, but didn't remove her hands from his shirt and kept pulling.

"Do you _have_ to go home?" she asked, the pout back in full force.

He nodded slowly but with great emphasis. (They had this argument regularly.)

She wrapped her arms tightly around his shoulders with a hrmph and a leg thrown over his hips, and his second arm came up to brace himself against the mattress, almost lifting her up from it as she clung to him.

"Let me convince you," she mumbled against his neck.

"Usako," he groaned.

She curled one hand against the nape of his neck, started carding her fingers through his hair there, fingernails stroking against his scalp, and felt him moan pitifully. It was one of his weak spots and one of the greatest weapons in her arsenal. She felt one of his arms buckle immediately and she bounced against the mattress as she was dropped back into it, Mamoru's weight crushing into her as he mewled against her, muffled by the fabric of her pjs against his mouth.

His voice was that of someone giving up who hadn't really put that much fight into the matter in the first place.

"_Fine_," came the muffled voice against her shoulder and the pillow, and she smiled a smug smile and wrapped her second leg around his hips as well, pinning her captured boyfriend to her fully.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you guys remember that scene in Super S where they are on the phone sooo cutely (because it was a disaster that they hadn't seen each other for ONE FULL DAY)? This kiss can be read as a changed version of that scene or just one modelled after it because I bet this happened all the time.


	3. A Kiss Goodbye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another one the tumblr crowd already knows. But, happy coffee break anyway? Let me know how you like these. There's still about 12 I haven't written, so if you have preferences for particular seasons for me to write in, let me know! (And also if you like these! Reviews are love and I love to hear from you! Keeps me motivated to write!)

* * *

A Kiss Goodbye

* * *

Her heart saw him before she did.

Before her eyes settled on his form, it had galloped away from her, warning her.

His smirk, when she finally spotted him, was downright criminal.

Her heart knew better.

He strode towards her too casually, too confidently, didn't avert his eyes at all. She nearly jumped out of her skin, looking around frantically. Surely, they'd spot him. Surely, they'd take one look at him and his delicious, sun-kissed, caramel skin, and the ridiculous outdatedness of what he seemed to think was Lunarian garb, and they'd spot him, capture him, imprison him.

He stood out like the fire in a sea of ice. He was too vivid, too richly colored. His skin seemed to almost glow in the pale, thin fabrics, surrounded by the pale marble, the soft pastell blooms, the grey soil. His skin was calling out to her to be touched, to be licked and savoured and devoured.

He was not allowed to be here like she was not allowed to be down there.

"Good evening, your Highness," he practically sang at her. His accent was so thick, swallowing the 'H' completely, rolling the words together as if to form a soft, foreign melody, and she would have whimpered to hear it had she not been so panicked. "What a pleasant surprise to run into you on these grounds."

His smirk turned wider, challenging. As if he wanted praise to endanger his own life like this and sneak into the palace grounds.

She looked around in horror and panic. Here and there people were passing, but due to some unknown miracle, her Senshi weren't around, and no one had given him and his thick black hair and his glistening, lickable skin a second look, and she was determined to keep it that way.

She quickened her step into the alcove behind the marble fountains that she used to hide behind when Jupiter and she had played hide and seek when she was little.

It had never been the best of hiding places, but it would have to do.

He followed her too closely.

When she turned back around, he was standing so close that her silver hair brushed against his skin, and she had to tilt her head to look up at him.

"Prince Endymion," she said, swallowing thickly.

"I think I preferred Dimi," he sang at her, interrupting her.

She pursed her lips. "What are you doing on the Moon, Prince Endymion? Dressed like this?"

His smile slipped from his lips. When he regarded her with serious, saddened eyes, transfixed on her for too long, she wanted to take it all back.

She knew the taste of these lips and she felt it puckering beneath her skin to take just another forbidden bite.

Forbidden. _Forbidden, forbidden, forbidden. _

When he finally spoke, she'd almost forgotten what she'd asked. She'd almost forgotten why this was wrong. That he was wrong here. How could something so tempting and so perfect be so wrong?

"You stopped coming down to Earth…" he admitted softly, in that perfect, intoxicating way these lips formed her language just that little bit wrong.

But the words themselves, sad and broken, tore her heart into splintering, tearing scraps.

She had. After they'd met, and she'd lost her soul to him, and after secret, reckless, stolen away moments after that, again and again, stolen kisses and stolen walks with her naked feet walking on lush, green softness along rushing, beating rivers, stolen whispers and stolen gasps and stolen hearts, she'd stopped. Her Senshi were right. She was risking two worlds for her own happiness. She was risking everything. They were right.

"We can't be," she whispered in answer even when she was already giving up, already leaning up, tugging at his hideous, pale robes.

When their lips touched, it felt like finally being able to breathe out again. He whimpered, his lips trembled in tune to hers, his tongue tasted like the rich honey wine that it had the day they'd met.

Silver strands tangled between caramel fingers when he wound his hands into her hair. She gasped against his tongue when her back hit the marble column behind her, and her pale legs wound around strong, lean hips that felt like home, cascading white silks around his form, when his lips once again started to travel and she once again got lost.

Just one kiss goodbye. Just one.

_Just one more and then we'll stop._

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Selfexplanatory setting tag for those scrolling to check: Silver Millennium
> 
> This can be read individually, or within my Catalyst universe as a continuation after "Harmless" in the Little Moment series.


	4. A Kiss Where It Hurts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually the first of the kisses that I've originally written for the Kiss prompt game! I feel it doesn't QUITE fit in with the others as much because of it, but... Yeah. So anyway, this has been sitting a while. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy this Tuesday kiss!

* * *

A Kiss Where It Hurts

* * *

His heart screamed in his chest so loud it felt like it was trying to rip its way right through the painful lump in his throat and the panic tingling in his toes all at the same time.

Her grip on it so light, the cutie moon rod bounced against Sailor Moon's leg in a boneless, dull thud and bumped almost comically off her shin, but it didn't fall. She deflated in a heap, after the droid had disappeared in a flash of pink magic.

Usagi gave off a pitiful groan and collapsed against the wall beside her, the one she'd previously been cornered against and he'd had no way to get to her, pinned as he'd been.

She wasn't crying. She wasn't screaming. The tears sat wet in her eyes, but they wouldn't fall.

That was worse.

Sailor Moon never howled when the pain was too hard. While Usagi would cry and bawl and lament and wail at every last little scratch - she had that one threshold, that one point where the screaming and wailing would end, and her pain would meet silence and numbness. It was a point he had sworn to never allow her to get to again, and here it was.

With the droid gone, his restraints now dissipated in a flash of almost gas like substance, as if they'd never existed, and he dropped to the ground completely graceless, his heart unwilling to slow down. His eyes were fixed on her, heartbeat in his throat, zeroing in on the angry, bleeding red marks all around her neck where the droid had tried - and almost succeeded - to choke her, suspended and kicking.

Sailor Moon had almost been _hanged_ in front of his eyes and he had been left to fucking _watch_. Watch her claw at the restraints on her neck, watch her wild, panicked eyes pleading with his while she did.

He stumbled forward, heart screaming. Tears and lingering fear were in her eyes and a grimace pulling at her lips.

She'd almost died. He did all this, pretending not to love her, pretending not to care, breaking her heart over and over and over again, to keep her safe. And yet she'd almost _died_. Right under his useless watch.

He fell against her in a way he would have hated himself for if he were in any state of mind to notice. Knees wide and wrapping around her legs, weight unfiltered and unchecked, crushing her as he almost dropped on her.

She didn't seem to mind.

Her fingers clutched at the dressy black fabric covering his biceps as he brought both hands up to hover over her neck.

His hands trembled. His whole being zeroed in on the bleeding marks, and the way his white gloves came away with a stain of red when he finally touched, and she hissed.

She wasn't crying. But he was. His face was wet and his sobs were ugly and unhinged, and her eyes were wide and watching him in silence.

His lips met her skin in a wet, salty, frantic way. Kissing the marks, her jaw, her cheeks, her eyes, her head, the marks.

His lips came away wet and red and he pressed harder when her skin started to glow golden.

One by one, the marks faded, the skin healed, her breath came harsh beneath his assault.

He hadn't known he could do that. He hadn't known his _lips_ could do that. But he had no thought left to spare to wonder about that, just like he had no thought left to spare that he was actually still supposed to be pretending not to love her.

"Don't leave me, don't ever leave me," he cried against her neck, as if he hadn't been the one leaving her, who kept leaving her, his lips still kissing the skin that wounds no longer marked.

The clunk of the cutie moon rod as it fell from her grip resounded around him, and her arms came up and clutched at his back in a hold that was tighter than his, clinging and grabbing and pushing his form against hers.

She finally started crying.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Setting Tag (for those scrolling to check): R


	5. A Kiss Where It Doesn't Hurt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually one I really like, and I have absolutely no idea why lol. But maybe you like it, too!

* * *

A Kiss Where It Doesn't Hurt

* * *

"Ow, ow, ow, _ow_," Usagi yelped, bathwater sloshing a little around them, and Mamoru instantly gentled his touch with an apologetic flinch.

"Sorry," he murmured against her temple, meaning more than just his too firm fingers, and massaged the slick, knotted area with a softer touch. It wasn't easy - they were in a bathtub after all.

"S'okay," she mumbled sleepily and arched her back and shoulders back against his chest, damp hair slick along his arm and pecs.

They were rusty. He blamed it on that. It had been _ages _since they'd needed to transform, and this alien sprout of dark energy had just taken them off guard. It really shouldn't have been that difficult, shouldn't have taken them so long, and it _definitely _shouldn't have left them that battered.

Usagi's torso and limbs were covered in dark, purple blotches. The bad kind, not the love kind, and it had driven him nearly wild in anger and made him even sloppier. He blamed himself for half of these.

And so he'd whisked her out of there in his arms afterwards, carried her straight home, and poured a whole bottle of arnica bath oil straight into the tub and cradled her between his legs as he tried to smooth out all the kinks in her back.

"Maybe we're just getting too old for this shit," he grumbled at a stiff area between two purple bruises on her shoulder, kneading it carefully between his fingers.

She flinched again and he gentled his touch once more, but sighed and snuggled further back into him, her hands curled around both his knees that stuck out of the water just in front of hers.

"20 and 23 isn't old, Mamo-chan," she breathed, her voice a little strained. "That hurts," she added.

He pursed his lips and reduced his touch to mere strokes.

"Anywhere it _doesn't _hurt?" he asked frustratedly, glaring at her battered skin as if that did the job of fixing it miraculously.

He only heard her smile, didn't see it, but her sigh was of the smiling kind and she reached back and tugged on one of his hands, covering it with hers, and slipped it palm down across her chest.

"Here," she asserted with all the cheek in her voice, and he chuckled.

"Is that right?" he commented, his voice taking on that flirty air almost out of reflex and she nodded her head against his face and chest with a hum.

"Anywhere else that doesn't hurt?"

Her eyes were closed, her smile stretching across her lips, and she tilted her head to bare her throat.

"Lots of places," she said, and he chuckled even as he pressed his lips to the junction of her neck and trailed them up in soft, dragging kisses to that spot just behind her ear.

"If you say so," he breathed with his lips against her neck, and puckered them to press a more insistent kiss against her throat.

"Mmm-hmmm," she sighed. "I'll show you every one."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Setting Tag: Post-Stars


	6. Kisses On Falling Tears

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's a new one! This one hasn't been posted on Tumblr beforehand. Enjoy your Thursday kiss :)

* * *

Kisses On Falling Tears

* * *

His fingers raked through her hair and across her scalp, pushing back blonde bangs over and over again. They fell back across her forehead after every stroke through them, the movement quickened by the quaking in her shoulders.

Her sobs were soft, and they tore through his heart like a hundred little paper cuts. He leaned his head back against his couch with a painful sigh, glaring at the ceiling, and kept stroking.

Her fists were kneaded into his pants, fingernails curling and scratching into fabric. He trembled with the force of her slow anguish, her thick tears in his lap, and that he couldn't take the grief away from her.

Swallowing thickly, he stooped; bent over in a way that was uncomfortable and yet comforting all at the same time, and pressed his lips against her hair.

"We'll see her again," he promised for the millionth time.

But it was different this time. For all the times she had left only to return, this time it was final. 'Just you wait,' Usagi had joked after the pink fog dissipated, attempting to cheer up the mood. 'She'll be back in 4 days tops!'

Their emotions had still been so raw. Only days ago, Usagi had held her as she'd disappeared from existence, back to stardust in Usagi's broken frame (_his fault his fault his fault_). It had been hard to let go this time in the first place.

Setsuna's sad, answering shake of her head had felt like falling out of the sky.

"But you'll see her again, of course..." Setsuna had trailed off awkwardly, apologetically.

They would. Of course they would... As her parents.

"It won't be the same," Usagi sobbed into his lap. "And I didn't know. I said goodbye to Chibiusa and I didn't _know_ it would be the l-last t-time," she hiccuped into his lap, shaking her head beneath his lips, and he stroked one hand down her back, her arms, trying to hold her together.

And maybe himself too.

Usagi leapt in his embrace. He was pushed back into his couch and she shifted in his lap to straddle him - her arms tight around his shoulders in a heartbeat.

"We could make her right now," she hushed against the shell of his ear, as if it was the best, most comforting of all ideas she'd ever had.

Of course it was ludicrous. They were far too young, it wasn't time. There was an envelope from Harvard in his mailbox he was too nervous to even bring up into his apartment, nevermind opening.

"Don't be silly," he whispered into the crook of her neck, but his fingers dug into the fabric of her shirt much the same as hers had into his pants. Clinging.

His voice broke saying it.

She leaned back, her face wet and studying him in scrutiny, eyes intense and somehow calming even when her tears still came.

And then she leaned back in, her fingers pushing into his scalp this time, returning the favor in almost mirrored movements. He only noticed his own face was just as wet as hers when she started to kiss the falling tears off his face with the warm, tender, lingering press of pink lips.

"We'll see her again," she mirrored his words, soft and heartbroken.

It was his time to break into a sob, and he clung. Buried himself into her embrace and broke apart.

It would be different. Beautiful. He knew it would be. But he also loved the family he already had, and it was now a little smaller.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag (for those scrolling): Stars, between the arcs.
> 
> Reviews are love! Let me know what you think, please :D


	7. A Kiss To Shut Her Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's another one the Tumblr crowd already knows! Hope I manage to sweeten your Friday coffee break, and I'll be back with you on Monday! (And if you want to sweeten MY day, let me know what you think, or even what you'd still like to see! :D)

* * *

A Kiss To Shut Her Up

* * *

He saw Sailor Moon breathe a sigh of relief and help the victim to her unsteady feet.

The woman still looked frazzled, the crowd around them forming. He knew from experience that the process felt violating, intrusive, strangely and uncomfortably intimate. Those dream mirrors _looked_ innocent enough, but…

Sailor Venus suddenly tensed, more than she previously had when the Remless had attacked and tricked her, and Tuxedo Mask whipped his eyes to where she looked in sudden terror.

What he found was still a relief, even if, yes… definitely not _un_-tense-worthy.

He followed after Venus with a sigh.

Always Usagi. They always cornered Usagi, knowing full well she was the Senshi most likely to accidently spill a secret (or a hundred).

Two microphones were already in Usagi's face, a guy behind them hefted a camera over his shoulder like particularly heavy weights, and he only caught the rest of what they were asking.

"–shrine you mentioned last week. Most of your sightings are in the Azabu-Juuban area, would it be any of the ones located there?"

Sailor Moon lifted her hand behind her head in nervous laughter just as he arrived, framing her other side as Venus stopped, menacing, on the other.

"Ah, no, no, of course not, I've _never_ been in the Azabu-Juuban area _ever_, ehehehe," Usagi tried nervously.

His mouth twitched, just as Chibi Moon and Venus facepalmed. They were standing smack in the middle of Juuban-dori, the exit of the metro station reading "Azabu-Juuban" in full view of the camera right behind Sailor Moon.

The reporter chuckled, pushing her microphone a little closer towards Sailor Moon. "Right, the week before you mentioned you have a brother–"

It was Chibi Moon who replied with a giant groan and a huff, second in command of Spilling Secrets To The Press.

"Ugh, of course you'd blab Sailor Moon, sometimes I still can't believe you're my Ma-"

Venus's hands clamped over Chibi Moon's mouth so hard the girl was lifted off her feet and against Minako's chest.

"Mentor," Venus completed Chibi Moon's sentence with a sweet, practiced, charming smile that betrayed everything else, even when she took a few backwards steps, retreating from the press.

Mamoru took the cue, nudged Sailor Moon's elbow as he did the same, taking her with him.

"No wait," the reporter called after them, following in slower steps, restricted by the cables and the camera. "So out of all the Senshi who do you think has the purest dreams…?"

Mamoru inhaled sharply. The question was reckless, put a target on their backs, the reporter knew better, and of course anything Usagi would answer here could give them serious trouble later.

He shook his head at her sharply even as she looked at him worriedly.

He could see her thought process. 'Better me than you guys', her worried eyes said. It didn't even _occur_ to her that she could just reply with 'No comment'. _Instead_ she opened her mouth, to his horror, and started throwing herself under the bus.

"I guess that would be m–mph"

His hand flew into her hair, crushing her up towards his lips and occupying her mouth as effectively as he knew how. In the process, he gave the reporters an answer to a question they'd been pestering them with for _years_ and they'd never gotten a satisfying reply to.

Guess now they did.

So, if that was how he dealt, he guessed he could put a little show in it. Bend her over, kiss a little deeper, and he chuckled into her mouth as her whole body seemed to sigh against him in bliss and go slack, lips turning soft and oh so pliant and receptive to his, her hands curling up to frame his face.

A little further away he heard a wolf-whistle that could only have come from Venus, safely away from the press.

Taking that as his cue, he snaked an arm around her waist, released her lips with a pop, and winked at the camera before jumping up and straight onto the next roof with his princess as his cargo.

She wrapped both arms around his shoulders, relaxing against his hold completely, letting herself be carried.

"How come you're allowed to do that, but every time I open my mouth in front of a camera you guys yell at me," she pouted.

He flinched an apologetic smile, putting all the sorry into it. If it were reversed, he'd be giving her hell. He had been the one saying it was better and safer for them if the press didn't precisely know if the rumours of their relationship held any merit. They'd be top news for weeks, get followed around at every battle.

But better the press demanding public affection than a Remless after her dream mirror, right?

"I'll make it up to you?" he cringed.

She only snuggled closer, happily sighing against his chest. "I'll take that in more kisses just like that one," she smiled against his neck. "And ice cream. Lots of ice cream."

He chuckled, tightening his grip around her legs for the next jump. "Coming right up," he said.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Setting Tag: Super S
> 
> So I'm a sucker for interactions when they're transformed. (Or also really if only one of them is transformed.) And I think for a show where they're superheroes together for FIVE SEASONS we get surprisingly little interaction like that in canon. And I want MORE. MOREMOREMORE. So yeah, maybe you agree lol.
> 
> (And also I will totally die on the hill that the Senshi would be a public interest phenomenon. Like the canon within-canon Sailor V anime. There'd be shows and merch and speculation and TV shows and movies and if there were real superheros in the world YES OF COURSE THERE WOULD BE FANS AND FANCLUBS. Friggin SPORTS CLUBS have fans and fan shops. The media and capitalism would be all over the Senshi lol.)


	8. A Kiss In Secrecy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Monday you guys! I hope you're still liking these :)

* * *

A Kiss In Secrecy

* * *

It had been thrilling, in the beginning.

She was his forbidden fruit. The one woman he wasn't only not supposed to have, the one woman he was not _allowed_ to have. And yet somehow, inexplicably, he got away with it.

He'd been infatuated with her from the start. Sometimes he asked himself if the thrill of the secret had a play in masking the fact that this was not merely an adventure. Starting out, he had not understood that she was inevitable. That she had stolen his heart and his wit and his reason with the theft of that rose the first time he had found her in his gardens. He thought he would be able to stop.

He couldn't. He wouldn't ever. She taught him what this heart could feel, and he would never be able to unlearn it.

But among these new feelings was that of it bleeding when he had to pretend she wasn't his, and he wasn't hers.

He was here on an official state visit. It was tense and hostile, and his companions, advisors and attendants spewed venom around the marble stone of the palace. A last attempt to calm the fronts to prevent the dawn of war. It seemed too late. It broke his soul, and Queen Serenity's with it, he could see it in the empress's eyes as if he'd looked into her daughter's.

Yet, there was a ball in their honor.

It was not the first time he had danced with her. It would not be the last. But for all eyes at this banquet, under the glow of the lights in this grand, domed, stone dance hall, it was both.

There used to be days when this was exciting. When seeing her and pretending not to know the soft whimper when he pressed himself against her was a playful dance, the most exciting of secrets spoken in lingering looks and careful, hidden smirks and innuendo in his words. It was a game played in dangerous fire, but it had thrummed through his veins and fueled his desire.

Now, holding her as if she was a stranger, moving her as if she was an unwelcome presence in his arms, unyielding, having her look over his shoulder into the far, impersonal distance as he kept her at arm's length and touched her as if he wasn't allowed to, not daring to say a word of intimacy to her because all eyes were on them, tense and hostile and full of the doom of war.

He felt her uneasiness. He knew it wasn't from his touch but from the situation, but the thought that his hands on her skin might ever be the cause of discomfort to her was excruciating. It made him want to jump away and free her from himself, it made him recoil from her skin and that in itself was a feeling her never wanted to associate with her.

Even the tune the harpist quartet behind them played felt stilted and oppressing, and he felt Serenity shudder in his arms, and the sensation was so repugnant because it was the first shudder from his touch that did not spring from anticipation and ecstasy, but from revolt.

She stumbled over her skirts, he tightened his hold on her hand and her hip in reflex and it startled her, frightened her, and it felt like a knife that plunged clean through his throat when fearful eyes met his in concern and alarm.

The knife twisted clean down from his throat to his heart when he realised this look of fear, born from the terror of exposure in his princess's eyes, was the first time she had looked him in the eyes tonight altogether.

Had he reacted without conscious thought he would have grabbed her and shaken her, pressed his hands against her cheeks and pressed his lips to hers to remind her that his touch was something that was meant to worship her, his touch was meant to bring her pleasure and never fear. Of course, he could not afford to lose his reason completely. And so, his reaction to the look in her eyes, even if still automatic, was altogether different.

He almost jumped away from her. Recoiled as if in disgust. He _was_ disgusted. By the situation, by the ball, by the eyes of everyone else in the room that was not his love.

But he could read the hurt in her eyes when he let go of her and jumped that step backwards and looked at her like so, and the approving stares of his advisors, and the slight stumble in the music.

He averted his eyes, couldn't bare to look at hers, and nodded his head in a slight, too slight, _disrespectfully_ slight bow, that he thought nothing of but regretted almost instantly when it seemed to echo through the halls both in delight and affront from opposite sides.

"Your Highness," he croaked, and fled.

He spent the rest of the uncomfortable affair glaring at her hand as it touched other men who danced with her. As her hands touched others and didn't look as stiff as they had in his tonight.

Thankfully, she retired early.

Sneaking into her chambers was not new either, but had never been so reckless. Even when he waited an hour, the palace was brimming with officials from both sides, the ball still in full swing, and the whole wing that held her rooms as well as the Queen's was protected and guarded as if the opposing army was in the building - and they were.

All her Senshi were directly outside of her tall, ornate swing doors when he stole through her window, his own planet highlighting his form as he snuck inside.

He slipped beneath the covers, the mattress so big and lush he didn't move it at all when he pressed himself against her shaking backside, wrecked with sobs.

She clutched at his hands as he stroked them across her belly. The stiff, unyielding, thick fabric of his dress tunic, the hard threads of the gold embroidery of the sleeves, felt utterly wrong against the thin, thin silk of her nightgown that barely managed to cover her, and he pressed desperate, grieving, heartbroken kisses to her exposed shoulder, the back of her neck, the skin behind her ear, the tips of her spine.

Her skin came away wet where his cheeks had stroked them through the onslaught of his fevered, frantic lips. He was crying, too.

Having her to himself had been an exciting adventure. Yet, it had begun to feel like having her only in secret meant not having her at all.

She turned in his arms, sought his lips with her trembling ones, and they tore his heart to pieces even if he couldn't stop returning them in his heartbroken panic.

It had been thrilling in the beginning.

It wasn't anymore.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag for those scrolling for it: Silver Millennium


	9. A Kiss In Public

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have a sweetened coffee break this fine Tuesday, guys :)

* * *

In Kiss In Public

* * *

It was a rare occasion that Usagi got up before him. In fact, he couldn't remember it ever happening before. And so, for the first time, he found himself waking up alone in her bed.

He ran a hand across his eyes in disorientation and turned on her soft mattress. Her pillow smelled of her, even when her side wasn't warm anymore, and when his wrist hit her pillow, it landed on paper.

_I had to help Mama bring a few cakes to Shingo's school fair, I'll be back before you miss me, promise!_

The note was signed with Usagi's signature doodle of a bunny, its x-mouth replaced by what he ventured was supposed to be a kiss. His smile at it was probably a little too dopey.

He wasn't supposed to be here, of course. He'd slipped into her room in the middle of the night, because these days he couldn't hold back. Though, by the way her mother had reacted when she'd stumbled upon him that one time in the bathroom, her parents weren't actually quite as unaware of his frequent presence in their house as he'd originally thought.

He dressed leisurely, sat at her desk, and after reading the news on his phone, he flipped open her homework that lay discarded on her desk for want of anything better to do while he waited. After erasing and replacing a few incorrect answers, he closed the folder again and pushed it a bit neater to the side of her desk.

Underneath, he came across a stack of purikura photo strips and an empty photo album. The stack toppled over and spread across her desk.

He smiled. There were tons of the girls in various constellations, even one with just Usagi and Michiru, making faces and striking poses sillier than the next for the camera. They were decorated bright and glittery - Usagi tended to go crazy with that function.

The upper two showed Mamoru with Usagi. His smile grew at the one she had enlarged of them. Usagi was pressing a lingering kiss to his cheek, he was rolling his eyes but sporting a blush (he wasn't the best at getting his photo taken, especially when in a crowd and loud arcade with groups of school girls chattering as they queued up excitedly in front of the occupied booth). There were two copies of the strip, and while he hadn't shown interest on the day they took these, he wondered if Usagi would give him a copy if he asked.

Then his eyes fell on a strip of photos farer down the pile.

Seiya, other than Mamoru, didn't look uncomfortable in these pictures at all. In fact, the handwritten script on the decorations wasn't Usagi's. He recognized the booth backgrounds, it was one exclusive to an amusement park Usagi loved to go to, took plenty of pictures with the girls at, and Mamoru tended to refuse to go. Hanayashiki Park.

Seiya obviously hadn't. Seiya wrote 'Seiya and Usagi's doki doki date' in sloppy characters surrounded by hearts across a picture of Seiya lifting her up with a giant smile on his face and Usagi being the one to roll her eyes with a smile in the photo.

He frowned at the picture. A heavy, uncomfortable knot furled and unfurled in his gut, and he pushed the photo underneath all of the others.

He was still frowning when Usagi returned with a bright smile and the announcement that she'd successfully secured two slices of her Mama's legendary lemon tarte for them under risk of her life by Shingo's menacing discontent.

"Maybe later," he'd grumbled, glaring at the now neat pile of photos stacked on the empty photo album.

He was in a grouchy mood and irritated with himself, and Usagi started to notice. He was about to excuse himself and call it a day and retreat to spend his Saturday buried in textbooks in his library when he called himself out of it, telling himself harshly not to punish this wonderful woman he was allowed to call his girlfriend with his insecurities.

Instead, he whirled around, startling her out of her dimmed smile.

"Do you want to go to Hanayashiki Park today?" he rushed at her with maybe too much intensity.

But her eyes brighted up, flashed at him in all their excited, powerful, disarming glory which managed to take his breath even now.

She clung to his waist in that excited way for the short ride across Minato, the wind pushing at their hair as he bent and curved and drove them there on his motorcycle.

She was radiating joy, hopping and jumping and clinging to his arm.

He found himself trying his hardest to be the most comfortable, most doting. He didn't roll his eyes once, he agreed to queue for the wildest rides, he didn't make a fuss at all.

He was trying to prove a petty point.

It was in that very photo booth (he'd suggested they queue immediately upon spotting it), that she first grew suspicious.

The photos turned out sweet (they always did), but when they stood around the back of it at the small touch screens to decorate, and he raised the second pink stylus to partake in this endeavour, Usagi stood staring at him with confused eyes. He shrugged it off, kept from blushing by sheer willpower, and wrote in pink with his indefinitely neater handwriting, 'Usako and Mamo-chan's doki doki date'.

He felt Usagi's dumbfounded stare burn through his skin.

She was still staring, her brow creased in that way too adorable but much too incriminating way, alternating between him and the small strips of photos in her hand when he dragged her by the elbow to the next attraction.

He stopped when he spotted the taiyaki stand. She'd want one, right?

Usagi stared harder.

He found her eyes, looking down. They were surrounded by people, loud and excited almost as much as she'd been. In front of them was a group of girls younger than Usagi, glancing back at them and giggling. Behind them was a mother and her two kids, the boy tugging at her mother's jeans and asking her why 'that man is so tall'.

The expression in Usagi's eyes as she gazed up at him now was thoughtful, almost concerned.

Because he wanted to, and because he was still proving a point, and because her concerned look itched across his heart and he wanted to replace it, he did what he normally wouldn't do in public, and certainly not in a queue sandwiched between a group of giggling girls and inquisitive little kids.

He bent and captured her surprised lips with his.

She responded - of course she responded. Her lips were soft and sure and brushing against his in that grounding, comforting way that almost distracted him from the contrasting ways his own lips seemed to tremble in his sudden, uncharacteristic nervousness.

When he pulled away, her hand was on his cheek, the other on his chest, the little boy behind them was loudly fake-retching as his sister made kissing noises while his mother tried unsuccessfully to hush them, the girls in front of them were blushing wildly and turning their backs to them completely, and Usagi's eyes had grown even more concerned.

Mission failed, it seemed.

She was barely touching her taiyaki when they sat on a bench a little later.

He reacted in the same way to her concerned eyes then, too. Bent down and kissed her soft lips.

This time, she didn't respond. Instead she started speaking the second his lips touched hers.

"You don't need to do that, Mamo-chan."

He withdrew his mouth only slightly with a frown, answering with his eyes still very close to hers.

"Kiss you?"

Her brow creased further. "Prove something."

He sat back. Sighed. Allowed the corners of his mouth to settle into the displeased expression from this morning.

"You'd prefer it if I were more open," he answered after a little back and forth of mutual staring that turned continuously charged.

She shook her head. "I prefer you just the way you are, Mamo-chan."

Her eyes were stern and calculating and when he sighed this time, it felt like something heavy dropping from his heart and at her feet.

This time, when he leaned in, he allowed himself the spiel again. He looked around carefully, and only when he saw no one was looking, he slipped his hands against her cheeks and drew her mouth to his.

This time, she responded, slipped her fingers against his temple and opening her mouth and he sighed, relieved, into the warmth of her mouth, completely undetected and finally letting go.

Her lips puckered against his two, three, four more times in sweet, soft, Usagi-kisses, until they ventured further up and dropped a small, sweet little peck to his nose. She was crinkling her adorable nose in a sweet, relieved smile when his eyes fluttered back open.

"Wanna go back home and eat Mama's tarte?" She smiled at him.

He smiled back. The sigh it accompanied felt like breathing deeply again, like something freeing. "Yes, please," he whispered.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Post-Stars
> 
> Anyway yeah baby boi is definitely not a PDA person and Usagi and Seiya are my BROTP and Mamoru would definitely get a little jealous (but hopefully not in the ways that would hurt her) so there lol.


	10. A Desperate Kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand this one was the second I ever wrote, back when I started this on tumblr! Alas, have a happy Wednesday everyone. (I got together with my husband 9 years ago today, it's a good day for me, anyway! :D)

* * *

A Desperate Kiss

* * *

She had him cornered. His arm was twisted in an odd angle and he collapsed before her, at her mercy. His eyes were hard and full of hate.

She could end this now.

Sailor Moon realised with a start that he'd been in a similar position so often… It would be so easy now.

Why hadn't he gotten rid of her, when he said all the time that that's what he was gonna do? Why hadn't he, when it was so easy?

He was breathing hard, pinned to her in this way, looking up at her in this vulnerable position.

The way his eyelashes kissed his cheeks as he blinked slowly, the way his lips opened ever so slightly when his eyes flicked to her lips and back up at her, so briefly she would have missed it had she blinked…

She couldn't. She couldn't fight him. She couldn't end this.

She released her hold on him immediately. His arm twisted free with an audible exhale pushed past his lips, but he didn't move away, he didn't get up from his perch on his knees in front of her.

He looked up at her, confusion written in his brow.

He was so beautiful. He looked so soft. How could he have forgotten how soft he was?

She pushed one gloved hand against his cheek, stroking, cursing the fabric that kept her from feeling his skin.

He jolted, brow furrowing, eyes steeling, but to her surprise, he didn't move. He stayed on his knees, looking up at her, eyes fixed into a steady glare… and then, to her absolute shock, he nuzzled his face into her stroking palm.

Her heart almost stopped. Her hand didn't though, and she watched his glare disappear behind his eyelids as he sighed and closed his eyes and pushed his face into her stroking hand. She pushed her fingers against his chin, his jaw, his cheekbone, his hair, to the sensitive skin just behind his ear and shuddered when she felt his frantic heartbeat at his jugular.

And then she tightened her caress into a stronger hold around his chin and crashed her lips to his.

To her surprise, his kiss was as desperate as hers.

He responded immediately, mouth open and breath harsh against her mouth and groaning low in his throat when her tongue lapped at him and dove deep. It was teeth and moans and warm, harried clashes and she felt his hands in fists on her sides, pulling her even closer just as she devoured him whole.

It was when she broke for breath and his eyes and glare flashed back, that he seemed to come to his senses, and the fists on her sides pinched hard, harder, and she yelped just as he pushed her away anyway.

"Mamo-chan…." Sailor Moon whispered through tingling, flushed lips.

His whole face darkened and he rose from his knees to tower over her, and it felt like she shrunk when he leaned back in with that menacing glare.

It was his turn to grab at her chin and pull it close to his mouth.

"Endymion," he growled, before pressing a hard, bruising, merciless kiss onto her lips.

He disappeared into thin air with his mouth still connected to hers.

A sob broke from her, a few moments later, alone in the dark.

"Mamo-chan…"

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Setting Tag: Classic
> 
> So yeah I do have a thing for the Evil!Endymion plot I admit it lol.


	11. A Kiss In Joy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here you have a completely new kiss :) Let me know what you think, please - I love to hear from you and keeps me motivated to write! Happy Thursday, everyone!

* * *

A Kiss In Joy

* * *

Sometimes, getting what you want was weird.

She'd practically run all the way here only to stop rooted to the spot not knowing how to act. She was so used to pining after this boy that she didn't know what she was supposed to _do now_.

She stood and stared a little at this door that she was so used to seeing shut.

Mamoru hadn't known she was going to come over. And yet when she finally knocked, he was there immediately, and when he opened the door he wasn't weirded out, wasn't confused, wasn't angry, didn't close it right back in her face.

He opened his door wide (not just an inch, not in the way he was terrified he wouldn't be able to slam it shut again, not terrified he might, perhaps, have to let her _in_) and looked at her with an intense look of adoration she simply wasn't _used to_. Didn't know how to _handle_.

And so she stared a little, unmoving.

"Usako…" he breathed.

His voice was higher than normal when he said that. Did she know that this was something he did?

"Do you… do you want to come in?"

He was gripping his _wide-open _door a little weirdly, as if hanging on to it, and there was a flush to his cheeks and an insecurity to his look that she was _pretty sure_ she'd never seen before.

Her voice croaked in a way that was a little embarrassing. "I-I'd love to."

It was weird. So, so weird, just… walking _in here_. He'd always been just out of reach. First brainwashed and taken by the Dark Kingdom, then a stranger without his memories and no eyes whatsoever for this weird girl who'd hastily spoken of past lives. And when she had him, finally, for not even a week, he'd broken up with her. And even after that, when she finally knew why he did what he did, the distance had remained, because he was too scared to do anything else.

And suddenly it had been all over. They knew it had all been nothing, now. Some weird, infuriating _test _\- which apparently, they passed. This was allowed now. She was _done pining_.

It was _weird_.

He stood a little too close and wrung his hands when she stooped in the genkan to take off her shoes, and he jumped a little ways away when she looked up and he seemed to realize he was hovering. And when she remembered the last time she'd spent some longer time standing in this genkan, shoes on - when she'd come over for him to break up with her with words that still rung in his ears - she kicked her shoes off a little faster so she didn't have to remain here for any stretch of time.

There was a vase of roses in his genkan, just as it had been _that _day.

"I…" he started, then shook his head. "Did you want…" He shook his head again, visibly frustrated. "Tea? Do you want tea?"

Apparently, it was just as weird for him.

He stood too close again, but not close enough to touch. His eyes were almost swimming in intensity. He looked at her like she was an apparition, or something that might disappear if he didn't give it his full attention. Like something precious. Like something too good to be true and he didn't deserve it, and frankly, it held a weight she didn't know if she could handle.

"No…" she said carefully.

"Oh," he said, deflating. His hand flew to the back of his neck and his lip shook. "I think I have…"

She interrupted him. "I'm sorry to barge in like this, uninvited…"

"NO!" he yelped, and she jumped, and he cringed.

"No," he repeated, calmer, quieter. "I… You're…" He swallowed. "You're always… always welcome here. No invitation needed."

"Oh," she said.

She rolled her shoulders back, willed her hands to stop trembling, and turned towards him, stepping even closer in the narrow space he'd left between them.

"I can come over every time I want?" she asked up at him, biting her lip.

He nodded a little too fast. "I'll get you a key," he whispered.

She blinked against the sudden surge in her chest, and it came with a cloud of courage that spread through her skin, and she placed a hand on his chest.

He jumped a little under her touch, and then he pressed against it.

"Can I do this every time I want now, too?" she asked, tilting her head, and stroked her thumb across his shirt.

He nodded mutely.

She curled her hand into his shirt and pulled.

"How about this?" she asked against his lips, and he met her hooded gaze wide-eyed, his breath puffing against her lips as she spoke. "Can I do this every time I want now, too?"

He didn't answer. Not at first. But he pressed his lips to hers and his hands flew up to cradle her face, thumbs stroking in the tenderest of touches against her cheeks, and she had to inhale sharply through her nose against the sweetness of it. The way his lips brushed hers so softly, the little noise he made, the slow pace he set, as if he was savoring her, as if he couldn't believe he was allowed a taste.

Well, she really couldn't believe it either. She could have this now? Really?

It spread warm and thick through her, like a pink fog of happiness that settled in her heart like a punch. She could have this now. Always.

His smile was so ridiculously happy when he let go of her lips but not of her face.

"Yes," he whispered, smile wide and full and new and _weird_, his thumbs still brushing her cheeks, her temples, the sensitive skin underneath her eyes. "Every time you want."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Setting Tag: Post-R but before S.
> 
> A little break-up arc aftermath for you guys :) Because these two deserve it.


	12. A Kiss In Grief

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO SO SO SORRY IN ADVANCE BUT I WAS PROMPTED TO DO ANGST WITH THIS AND THIS IS JUST WHAT MY BRAIN SPAT OUT I'M SORRY BE WARNED. The tumblr crowd know this obviously, but ,yeah… here you go and I'll go hide in the corner.

* * *

A Kiss In Grief

* * *

Venus didn't have a lot of time left. She knew that.

She thrust her sword deep into the grey, barren soil outside the palace grounds, far away from the burning ruins of her formerly impenetrable home.

Her hands slipped on the hilt of the holy sword, caked in blood and dirt. When she coughed, small red droplets flew around her in the changing gravity.

Even the atmosphere of the Moon was burning, shriveling, dying. Soon, it would be inhabitable altogether.

Not that anything was left alive.

She was the last person with a beating heart on this rock. Not for long, that is. She could feel her stength slipping from her through the open wound in her stomach, held together only by a strip of cloth that used to be Sailor Mercury's skirts before she, too, fell in battle.

For some strange and unfair reason, Venus had outlived them all. Even her Queen lay dead in the prayer room, having used her last dying breath on a wish using the Legendary Silver Crystal. Venus wasn't sure if she believed this wish to be a blessing or a curse, or if it would work in any way.

She'd had a choice to make. Venus only had strength in her bones left to dig this one grave. Her princess or her Queen.

Her princess won, of course. It was the last service she could provide. A small token to dull her shame.

She was the shield. And yet she dug her princess's grave.

Only when it was deep enough did Venus allow herself to look again.

With a sob that tore through her very soul, she dropped the sword, and fell to her princess's side. Her body was cold when Venus lifted her. Her arms hung limp, her white dress had been stained a deep red from the chest out, from where Serenity had stabbed herself to death in her grief.

Venus choked on a violent sob as she pressed a kiss to Serenity's dead brow, before she carefully lay her in the way too shallow ground.

Then she turned and lifted the second body.

Endymion's body was much heavier. She felt her insides rip open farther under the strain, and dropping him into the ground was much less careful than with the woman whose death he had helped to cause.

Yet, Venus was a lot more careful when she turned them towards each other.

Serenity wanted to be with him. It was a wish she died for. It was the least Venus could do now: assure that her princess would be with her love in death, forever.

She turned them in a way that their lips touched.

With a sob that tore through her body, ripping her open in the truest sense of the word, she pushed the grey soil she had dug up into the pit, and buried them beneath it.

The soil trickled down onto their still faces first, covering them dust by dust, tiny pebble by pebble.

She didn't manage to cover them back up fully. She collapsed halfway. Breathing became harder in the thinning air, and her coughs rattled with the blood in her lungs as she fell with her back on the half-covered grave, out here in the endless grey soil of Mare Serenitatis, staring out into the dead, silent, gravely galaxy.

Death took her too, quiet and slow, lying on her greatest loss with her eyes wet and wide open.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Silver Millennium
> 
> I AM SORRY. I blame my husband he encouraged me to write this atrocity. Monday's will be a happy one again I promise xD.


	13. (Attempts At) Discreet Kisses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was actually one of the last ones that made it onto Tumblr! Anyway, guys, I hope you have a happy Monday! Enjoy!

* * *

(Attempts At) Discreet Kisses

* * *

"Shhhhh," Mamoru hushed into her mouth, trying to swallow all her moans, even when his hands wouldn't stop their torturous journey across her blouse and navy skirt and his teeth captured her lower lip between his in that way that would always make her whimper.

She tried to. She really did. She tried to stay quiet by all means.

But then his lips and tongue were back at her throat and his hands on her butt and his mouth was sucking on the tender flesh behind her ear in that way that made her dissolve in his arms and also make a lot of noise.

He hushed her again, and the whole purikura booth rattled when he lifted her up and set her on the white plastic alcove next to the camera and lights, and when he pulled her to him, hands around her thighs, lifting them so she would wrap them around him, it was him who moaned against her throat.

"Shhhh," Usagi repeated with mirth in her voice that just turned into another mewl.

Hiding in Crown was fairly easy, to be fair. Tons of places to discreetly hide away. They'd done way worse than this lately.

Fooling around in purikura booths on quiet days at the Crown was one thing. They'd snogged in changing rooms in Shibuya 109, in one of the segregated booths at her favorite Chicken Yakitori chain restaurants, that one glorious time the metro car had been empty except for the two of them - those were all the relatively tame ones. But at Hikawa? Her high school festival last week? In her bed with Luna sleeping in the room? They were getting careless and staying discreet was getting harder and harder and one day they'd get caught and Mamoru would remember why he actually tended to die at even the thought of PDA and all this adventurous, hormonal madness would stop and she would mourn it for the rest of her life.

So, she grabbed him by the hair and reclaimed his shuddering, swollen mouth and kissed him a little harder, clamping her legs around him tightly.

Usagi was fairly certain that nothing would ever be as exciting as the phase she and Mamoru were currently going through. It couldn't. No way.

Something had clicked. Something was… happening. Now. Soon. Eventually. Something like that. For all this fooling around, they hadn't done it yet. But it was close, so, so close, she could feel it in her bones - and so could he. Sometimes he was _trembling_ when she touched him. It was intoxicating. Addicting. She needed _more_. She needed all. She couldn't wait.

Except she could. In fact, nothing seemed sweeter than drawing this out, whatever this magic was. Endlessly, forever. She was contented to savour this for every last drop.

After years of chaste, rated-for-all-audiences, always-pjs-wearing, oftentimes-their-future-daughter-was-around-for-god's-sake, sweet normalcy, something had suddenly snapped. Suddenly, Galaxia behind them, they were ready, or so it seemed.

Suddenly those make-out sessions wouldn't end, suddenly, when she was pressed into his couch for way longer than a single kiss, his hands were everywhere, his lips were too, and she loved nothing more than the feeling of his clothed hips pressing against hers because holy _damn_.

Heated, endless, sometimes hour-long make-out sessions. Even if very few clothes would fall (though it surprised her how still everything could be touched), it felt like she was drunk and high and addicted, and she couldn't stop.

Nowadays, he was mostly panting harshly, his hair was mostly tangled and disheveled by her hands, his eyes that half-lidded, impatient-yet-savoring intensity, his lips forever swollen and sometimes, the best times, his mouth was entirely and deliciously smeared with her lipstick that blotted all the way down to his collarbone.

She felt on top of the world. To think they could have been doing this for _years_?

"We shou–" He was cut off by her lips following his and he slid them back across hers wetly with a pained sigh before he tried again. "We should get back soon, they'll wonder where–"

The rest of the sentence was never uttered, he forgot what he wanted to say when Usagi's mouth found his earlobe and her hands slipped into the back pocket of his jeans and squeezed.

They did stop, eventually. Every hair out of place, his lips especially so swollen they looked painful.

The girls just rolled their eyes, resumed their conversation except for Minako, who threw them a wink as Usagi slipped in next to her.

"So, I'm guessing there was a long line?" Minako snickered when they re-joined them at their booth, dramatically sweeping her eyes across the almost deserted arcade.

"Mhmm. And then the machine wouldn't work," Usagi threw at Minako with a little smirk and stole a fry from her.

"Right. They're broken awfully often for you," Minako commented with her own smirk, and Mamoru blushed, got up abruptly, and walked to the counter to order, hands in his hair to try and tame the disaster.

"Yup, it's absolutely awful. We're cursed."

Minako snickered. "I bet."

She could get so, so, so used to this.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Post-Stars
> 
> (And anyway, yes, I am 100% nostalgic for that time with those gloriously intense, seemingly ever-lasting, exciting, innocent teenage snogs and am so gloriously happy for everyone who has yet to experience this phase (fucking ENJOY IT) and really I hope everyone who did love this as much as I did had this phase very, very thoroughly because amazing. I miss those.)
> 
> On an unrelated note, there will not be a kiss tomorrow. I'm skipping tomorrow. Instead, you'll get my Fall In Love Fic Exchange fic tomorrow!


	14. A Casual Kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, since my Fall In Love Fic Exchange fic wasn't actually fall-themed, at least this kiss is? A little? Anyway, happy Wednesday everyone!

* * *

A Casual Kiss

* * *

Times like these, he was almost certain they might get away with this.

Everything about her was pale light. Her complexion so milky the blue veins stood out against her skin. Her silver hair that in the warm sunlight seemed almost a glittery, light, so light, blue-ish purple-white, shimmering as the fine, delicate strands fluttered with the autumn winds. Even her clothing was almost fled of color - the small, narrow soft, cream colored fur cape, those surprising leather breeches a beige so light they almost matched her skin.

It was all in stark contrast to the richly colored world around her. The red and yellow and orange foliage, the rushing rivers, the golden afternoon light. Everything about her pale and ethereal except the bright golden moon insignia on her forehead that seemed to want to jump amongst the autumn forests as if it belonged there instead.

She was the most beautiful being he was capable of imagining. A goddess among men. No one else would ever compare. He would love her beyond death, he felt it in his soul and in his bones. And right now, for this little enclave of paradise, she was about to be pressed up against him until the eve if he would just have his way.

And he always had his way.

She stood hovering, warily looking between the guards, Jadeite, the horse, and him.

"I've never done this," she'd confessed with wide eyes.

"What?!" Jadeite had sputtered, forgotten his manners, and earned Endymion's dark glower until he sputtered out a more subdued, "Pardon, your Highness…"

"It's just not common on the Moon, you see…" she said unsurely, licking her lips.

The mare was a bred as beautiful as they come. The most beautiful he knew. He'd picked it out himself from the royal stables. Yet of course it didn't help if she knew not how to ride.

And so he'd argued his case. Argued it well.

"I insist," Endymion hushed again with glowing, intense eyes.

It was unheard of, he knew.

The guards were whispering, he knew that also. This was too lowly a job for a prince.

They'd been whispering all day. And they were doing it loudly, almost unguarded. A princess in breeches. A princess who could not ride a horse. A princess who would not understand a word they whispered about since she did not speak the common tongue of Earth.

But he had the best excuse. The best excuse in the world. Princess Jupiter, her escort for the visit, was sitting clumsily on her own horse. She had learned to ride many a years ago. Yet the horse was not an animal native to the Moon, and so to put the heiress of the Silver Millennium in the saddle of someone not capable of guarding her in this moment was downright treason to commit.

He was the best equestrian in the region. She would ride with him.

And she did.

Even under Jadeite's disapproving glare and the guards whispering, no one stopped him as he put his hands around this petite vision who held his world and soul and heart and yet no one must ever be allowed to know, and lifted her into his saddle. No one stopped him as he swung up himself, no one stopped him to enjoy the thrill of her small fingers as the laced around his waist and settled on the waistband of his own breeches, no one stopped them as she pressed against him, her thighs against his.

He would have Serenity pressed against him for hours, in the middle of a royal escort. He felt so agitated and excited all at once it almost made him high.

Yes, days like these, he was almost certain they would get away with it. That they would get to grow old together right under their noses, that he would get to wed her and call her his wife and no one might ever be the wiser as they hid in plain sight, staging state visit after state visit just so she might press her entire body against his back until the morrow.

It made him feel giddy. It made him reckless. Careless. Stupid.

It was that very night that the end started. That very night that they slipped.

Too comfortable. Too careless. Too casual.

He'd been pressed up to her for hours, gotten drunk on her proximity. At one point, as the sun had begun to set and the shadows grew thicker and they'd ridden through the narrow passages of the wine valleys as they were stripped for the harvest, that her hands had strayed and he had shuddered, wanting nothing more than to urge his steed into the fields instead and ride with her into the sunset until they were lost, until no one would recognize them, until they could run.

He was drunk on her and he was sloppy and thoughtless and he took too many risks because they always did, because he wanted to, and this time it was too much.

They'd trotted into a clearing for the horses to rest before the last full gallop. They'd almost arrived. He'd thought no one saw. He didn't even think anything of it, didn't even do it consciously. It just happened.

When he lifted her off his saddle, hands on her hips and cradling her too intimately, his lips brushed against her cheek almost thoughtlessly. The most innocent of all the kisses he'd ever bestowed on her in all those months of secret, forbidden, stolen intimacy. A moment of mindlessness.

She'd frozen in panic the second his lips touched her skin.

Behind them, Jupiter gasped and spooked her horse, causing it to whinny.

Serenity's eyes exploded in fear, and she was with her guard and out of his embrace before the horror even started to sink in for him.

"You promised it was nothing," Jupiter hushed in High Lunarian, with intensely frightened eyes.

"_It is_!" Serenity promised and it gutted him instantaneously, opened up a crater in his gut.

He whirled back around to hide the hurt.

They made it back to the northern palace before nightfall. Serenity did not ride the rest of the journey with him. And the next time a state visit was scheduled, the Princess Venus came in Serenity's stead. And the next time, too. And the one after that.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Silver Millennium
> 
> And thank you guys who are reading these and reviewing for me or kudos-ing. I know these are small and to feel you are interested either way makes me feel all the warm! Thank you!


	15. A Passionate Kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween, everyone! (Those who celebrate it anyway, but those who don't get to have a happy day today too, obviously, lol!) This is a new kiss again, and I hope you enjoy it!

* * *

A Passionate Kiss

* * *

"Chibiusa said we're not passionate enough."

Mamoru turned to her with lifted eyebrows, the plastic bag with their conbini purchases hanging from his wrist shaking a little with the motion.

Usagi was walking beside him, nose stuck in her new manga they'd purchased earlier, some yaoi thing opened on a kiss, and she looked as if she'd never spoken.

"Oh?" he threw down at her. "And since when is she the expert on this?"

Usagi just shrugged, turned a page, and he tugged at her elbow a little to make her swerve around a pole in her path she would otherwise have run into with a little sigh on his lips.

"She said she's surprised. Something about teenagers supposed to be all hormonal and never able to keep their hands off each other and really into each other. That she'd thought with the way the Queen and King act with each other in the future, we'd be more passionate."

She finally looked up with a shrug, then visibly started at the look in his eyes; didn't even protest when he grabbed her manga from her.

He probably looked at her a little too intense. But then again, he felt a little offended.

She shrieked a little when he pulled her into the next little alley around the corner, backed her against the back-wall of a terracotta-colored building, and boxed her in with one arm on the wall beside her face.

Then he leaned in close, eyes fixed on hers, before he ran his nose along her cheek, her temple, let his lips drop to her ear. The bag and manga dropped to the ground, dismissed.

"And do you think so, too?" he breathed down her neck.

"Uh…" she blinked, cheeks flushing as she licked her lips and focused on his, as she curled her hands into his black turtleneck and arched her back as she leant up unconsciously.

It was so easy to get her flustered, sometimes.

He leaned in close, his lips hovering just over hers. "Do you?" he breathed into her mouth before he closed the gap.

His goal was to kiss her senseless, of course. To prove a point kind of petty to prove; stupid male ego. But it had tickled, and he was only going to let go when she was shivering, moaning, begging, or all of those.

Her tongue was hot in his mouth, her lips tasting of her strawberry lip balm, her lower lip trembling as he sucked on it, and he deepened it even more when he felt Usagi's hands curl into his hair and tug on it, when she moved onto her tip toes and rubbed her body against his with a little sigh.

She collapsed against him, yanking at his hair, and her tongue in his mouth was insistent and sweet and perfect, and he tilted his head and allowed the kiss to become even deeper, his tongue almost rough against hers.

He got carried away. Kissed her too fast until she was writhing against him and when he'd planned to release her - when he yanked his mouth free from hers - he instead sucked a slow, wet path down her throat, sucked and nibbled too hard and left marks, even when she was already long pleading hushed, breathy, worked up babbles of his name, moaning when his hands dug into her hips a little too hard, pulled her against him a little too flush. He should have known better.

But when he did have the strength to pull back, and she fell back against the wall with hooded eyes and swollen lips and purple blotches on her neck, and with her clothes a little rumpled, he couldn't help the small smirk.

He lifted her chin delicately, using just one fingers to tilt her back up. "Do _you _think I'm not a passionate enough teenager, Usako?" he breathed back against her lips.

"N-no," she gasped, and yanked him back by his shirt and caught him with her lips to get a little more.

He came willingingly and stayed a while. He had a point to make.

Chibiusa, after all, never saw the things he only allowed in private and behind closed doors and the occasional kitchen floor. And obviously, now random Juuban side-streets, too.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Super S
> 
> And yeah this was totally inspired by that random Super S scene in the age-switch episode where Chibiusa saw Usamamo kiss through the gap of a door!


	16. Lazy Kisses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an older one again; one of the first I've written! Either way, I hope your November starts out good! Happy Friday!

* * *

Lazy Kisses

* * *

The coffee machine gurgled loudly, sputtering in a high-pitched, groaning hiccup as it expelled brown liquid into his coffee cup.

It felt to him as if the machine had never been out of use. But there had been a film of dust on it, as well as on all his mugs, suspended as they'd been from hooks underneath his cabinets. They now all sat on a dish towel, dried next to the sink.

He'd have to give his apartment a thorough clean. To his perception, no time had passed between his death and resurrection. … Well, maybe not _no_ time, not really. It felt like one of these vague dreams that distorted his perception of time - those where it could have been hours since he'd fallen asleep, or minutes. And just like he'd be only able to tell by the color of the sky and the flashing of his digital clock in these moments, the dusty film across all of his belongings was an indicator of how long he'd been dead by Galaxia's hand.

He'd spent a good portion of the week scrubbing and dusting and sweeping. But the dust was everywhere, and honestly, he had more important things to tend to and re-build and nourish than his hardwood floors.

In a way, he'd never felt more 'Endymion'. At least in regard to the mythical connotations clinging to that ancient name. Destined to eternal sleep while life continued around him.

He'd have a lot of work cut out for him getting to the bottom of these feelings, too.

Not today.

He carried his mug back through the room by its handle. In passing, he grabbed a book off his shelf, instead of all the newspapers he'd laid out on the counter to get him back up to date. The book had been a recommendation by Michiru, forever ago. Fiction. Indulgent. He'd never made time for it between his textbooks.

He'd make time for more indulgent, more joyful things in his life from now on.

And he'd start with moments like these.

Usagi was splayed across his bed on her stomach, snoring softly, barely audibly. She'd rolled onto his side of his small bed while he was gone from it, one hand hanging off the side of it, the other beneath her cheek. Naked, freckled shoulders were peeking from his covers. The sight filled him up and moved his lips into an inevitable smile.

He took a careful sip of his coffee and leaned across to put the mug on his windowsill as not to spill anything. Then he carefully climbed on top and over Usagi's sleeping form to squeeze into her vacated side instead.

When he slipped back underneath the sheets, she stirred immediately. His thighs had barely brushed her side and she was turning, fast asleep, and draping herself across him.

His smile turned wider.

He fluffed his pillow and moved it up to support the small of his back as he leaned back against his headboard, book and blonde head in his lap.

For a while he just sat there, watching the fluttering curtains scatter sunlight off her hair and his fingers card through her fringe.

She sighed softly, the golden strands shone and glittered in the light beneath his fingertips.

She had spent every night here since he'd been "back".

Today was Sunday. He wasn't planning on getting dressed today. They'd do a lot of things her way, from now on. He was determined.

Leaning down, he started peppering small, lazy kisses across her forehead, her cheekbone, her hair, her ear.

Her skin was warm and soft from sleep and smelled of home. He inhaled like a creep and pressed his lips against her eyelid. It fluttered, but she didn't open her eyes, just grunted in that cute way, and he kissed her brow, her temple, brushed up her fringe with a slow stroke of just his fingertips, and kissed her hairline.

She scrunched up her nose adorably and burrowed it further into his chest.

"Five mo min'its" she grumbled with her lips against his sternum, muddling and muffling the sound, and his smile turned even wider.

He stroked his hand back against her hair with a sigh, and after retrieving his glasses from their perch on the windowsill next to his coffee mug, flipped the book open to the first page with his free hand, the other firmly burrowed in her hair.

She could have all the minutes that she wanted. He wasn't planning on moving out of this bed anytime soon.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Post-Stars


	17. A Kiss To Distract

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a kiss that I already posted on tumblr pretty early on! I hope you like it, if it's new for you, and still like it, if it's not lol. Happy Monday!

* * *

A Kiss To Distract

* * *

"So, I've narrowed it down," Usagi announced, hopping with her knees onto his couch.

He did a double-take, knowing he should be focussing on the list she was holding in her hand and had been very serious about previously. Yet, the way she sat, her oversized T-shirt fell off her shoulder and revealed just that tempting little top part of a lacy bralette he was sure he hadn't seen on her before.

"You've… narrowed it down?" he parroted back to her, voice suddenly hoarse, eyes on the swell of lace covered boob, utterly distracted.

He swallowed. _Supportive mode. C'mon. Supportive mode, no ogling. _

He managed to rip his eyes away and focus on her face. She hadn't even noticed, which was saying something all in itself about how serious this was to her.

Usagi nodded vehemently and read from her list. "Still in the running aaare," she read in a rather dramatic voice and held up one finger in her dramatic pause.

"Vending machine placement scout," she announced proudly, and he snorted.

That received a kick in his side, issued out by a soft naked foot attached to a soft, almost naked leg.

"I'm serious!" Usagi cried with indignation. "Asahi is hiring! It's flexible hours and I get to eat on the job and run around Tokyo!"

He threw her a look. "What else is on this list, then?"

She glanced down on the little slip of paper only briefly.

"Professional apologizer," she read from her list.

He blinked at her.

"It's this service provided by this company that lets you hire people to apologize for you. Everything from heartfelt apologies via email to coming to grovel for them in person. The higher the apology needed, the better the pay," Usagi explained way too excitedly in his opinion.

"And that made the cut why?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.

On her original list of possible jobs - now that she'd graduated high school and was looking - had been things like 'work at Osa-P' that he'd found perfectly reasonable, and she'd crossed out fairly soon. Obviously, it was her decision, whatever she did, but…

"Think of it! I'd get to use my talent of dealing with people's emotions and get paid for it! I'd be good at it!"

Mamoru frowned. He didn't like the idea of Usagi on her knees in front of people for things she hadn't done, used as a face to get angry at in people's stead.

"What else," he grumbled.

"Well, Maid Café–"

"Absolutely not," he interrupted her immediately with a firm shake of his head and all the horror in his eyes.

"But Mamo-chan, I'd get to wear pretty dresses and dance and sing on the job and make people smile and draw cute stuff on food and–"

"–and get paid to be ogled by men who get a kick out of the fact that you are calling them 'master'! No, absolutely not. Next."

He knew his tone was uncalled for and so was the clenched fist and narrowed eyes, and she had every right to glare back at him the way she did. He had absolutely no right, none whatsoever, he was not a judge here just a listening ear, and it _was_ her decision, he knew this, but nope, not happening, not over his dead body.

She huffed at him but read the last point out anyway.

"Professional cuddler," she read.

His eyes whipped back around. "Excuse me?"

"It's a service that offers hugs and spooning to people who feel they need one. For anyone who's been lonely for a long time to people grieving or in depression or hikikomori. It doesn't go beyond the hugs or maybe a back-rub."

Her tone was careful. It couldn't dull out his absolute, horrified appallment.

"Think how good I'd be at it! It's a job I can literally do in a bed. And I'd get to be there for people who need me. All those people who need a hug and I'd be allowed to give them one and even get paid for it! I'd be great at it–"

She _would_. She would be wonderful at it. This service _needed_ someone like Tsukino Usagi with her giant heart and abundance of compassion and she was made for this job description exactly, this company wouldn't believe their luck.

…But he was not prepared to share.

And so he interrupted her defense of what she undoubtedly had deemed the perfect job for herself by pressing his lips against hers and tugging at that too loose too big T-shirt, and poured it all out.

His kiss was probably a bit too possessive. His tongue insistent against hers, his lips too fast and demanding. Trying to distract her from the fact he was completely in the wrong to butt into this decision, but no way, no absolute fucking way.

Usako was his. He didn't share. He wouldn't.

She squealed into his mouth but wrapped her hands around his shoulders as he pulled her to him, his teeth pulling at her lower lip just as his hands pulled her into his lap.

The kiss was _meant_ to be distracting, and it was, even when he knew she knew what he was doing. His own hands slipped underneath her shirt and over the lace of that mystery bralette, and really, she was the sweetest person in the world that she would want to do a job like that, but no one got to hold her but him.

"Mamo-chan–" she breathed into his mouth, tone amused, hands on his shoulders.

He moved his lips from hers down her jaw, her throat, started tugging up her shirt and she giggled and lifted her arms to help him along.

He tossed it blindly behind him.

"So," he said, voice breathy as he pressed them out between kisses against her throat, his tongue dipping into the hollow of her collarbone, teeth grazing along soft skin.

"Vending machine placement scout, yeah?"

He felt her rolling her eyes, even when she started tugging at his shirt in return.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Post-Stars
> 
> All these jobs are real btw lol. Never let it be said there aren't jobs for you if your interrests and talents are eating, sleeping and reading manga lol.


	18. Encouraging Kisses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this one is a new kiss that wasn't on tumblr yet and it's in no way original lol. But it's BELOVED and I wrote it anyway lol. See end notes! ANYWAY. HAPPY TUESDAY AND CHECK OUT THE FIC EXCHANGE FIC FOR FALL IN LOVE 2019 THEY'RE AMAZING. ESPECIALLY THE ONE I GOT FROM TINA CENTURY GO LOOOOK!

* * *

Encouraging Kisses

* * *

It was a lazy sunday. A good Sunday. At least for him it was.

He snuggled his face closer into the crook of her warm neck, pulled her hips a little closer against him, arms wrapped firmly around her, clamped his knees a little tighter around her form, hugging her completely from behind and hanging from her like the lovesick fool he was.

But she smelled so good. And she felt so good. Warm and puffy from sleep, still in the pink shorts and white tank she'd worn to bed, skin soft and doughy and sleepy.

It was a weird few weeks. Where Usagi would willingly ignore him like this, in his apartment, on a Sunday morning, to sit at his coffee table and study English.

But last-minute-panic had her in a strong-hold. Her English finals, the last of her graduation finals (_finally_), were scheduled for Wednesday.

His job, _'while he was already there', she'd mumbled in amusement,_ was to check for mistakes as she scribbled arguments in English to the prompts she'd made him write her earlier in the morning.

She'd gotten UP for this. Left the BED for this.

"Two s and one c in 'unnecessary'" he corrected absentmindedly, puckering his lips at the end of his sentence and dragged them down her throat, one hand slipping underneath her shirt.

She nodded, crossed the word out with a determined scratch across her writing pad, and wrote it again. Her writing looked cute in English.

He looked at it only with his lips still trailing along her neck and shoulder, his hand traveling all the way up along smooth belly and soft shirt and found the enticing skin fold underneath one very warm and very inviting little perfect mound and dragged his finger slowly along the seam.

"Mamo-chan..." she scolded, her pretty pink mechanical pencil raised to tap his nose over her shoulder. "What are you doing?"

He hummed, puckered soft kisses onto her shoulder and spread his other palm flat across her belly, firmly underneath her shirt now, too. "I'm encouraging you," he murmured into her still so sleep-warm, puffy, perfect skin.

She shook a little in his arms with her chuckle vibrating through her. "Oh, _are _you now?"

"Mhmm," he hummed, unperturbed, dragging his nose along the curve of her perfect neck and nuzzling the nape of it.

"By distracting me," she intoned, half amused, half annoyed, a little temptation that she clearly fought shining through nonetheless.

He shook his head, dropped his lips to that spot behind her ear. "Not distracting," he whispered, and began tracing the shell of her ear with his lips.

She snorted, but it came out a little breathy, "uh huh."

"Mhmmm," he hummed happily, his lips pulling into a full smirk when he felt a shiver run through her under his touch, and his hand, stroking lazy lines underneath her breast, travelled up a little higher.

"Just keep going," he encouraged through a grin at her throat, and pressed another kiss against the skin. "Don't mind me."

She exhaled in a shudder, but her pen moved once more. She managed three more sentences before she tackled him.

It was a good Sunday.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Post-Stars
> 
> So this one is in no way original lol. Antigone2 already wrote it better with her ficlet Distractions, and even cockpit drew a version. Versions, even. But yeah, I firmly am behind the fact that these kisses would happen, lol. THIS IS SO IN CHARACTER IT'S PRACTICALLY CANON. So, two cakes. Seventeen cakes.


	19. A Kiss For Luck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Wednesday, guys! Have fun with this tiniest of all the kisses lol!

* * *

A Kiss For Luck

* * *

Usagi's heart was beating in her throat, sweat beading on her brow and pooling in the dip of her collarbone.

Her breath was coming rough and hard and the fear was a pulsing, alive thing in her veins.

The adrenaline coursed through her so hard, she could feel it in her trembling limbs and taste it on her tongue, ready and alert and all her senses prepared to fight for her life.

For all the enemies she had faced in her life, including a previous one, she had nothing to measure this by. And so she gripped onto Mamoru's hand as if it was keeping her from drowning.

They had prepared for this. She knew it was inevitable. She'd known it was coming almost all her life, this big sword of doom that had always lingered over her head.

It was time.

She swallowed hard, took a shaky step forward. And then another.

She'd choose to fight three Galaxias at once if she could just get out of this.

Mamoru pried his hand free from hers and squeezed her shoulders. She turned towards him with panicked eyes like a marionette on its strings.

His eyes shone with just that hint of panic, too, when he leaned down and pressed his lips against her cold and shaking ones.

She couldn't even really kiss him back. She was too afraid. His lips moved softly, compassionately against her limp ones and she just stood there and let it happen.

He squeezed her shoulders once more when he let go of her lips and straightened up.

"I believe in you," he murmured against her temple.

Then he gave her a little shove through the door.

High school graduation finals, meet Tsukino Usagi.

This was her _true_ boss fight.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Post Stars
> 
> And yeah this one is completely ridiculous, I know, I know lol.


	20. A Kiss On A Scar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thursday, guys! And thank you so much to those that stick around with me for these kisses! I appreciate to hear from you SO MUCH!
> 
> This one is another one the tumblr crowd already knows, but it's one of my favorites by far!

* * *

A Kiss On A Scar

* * *

Mamoru smiled into his book when he heard the key turn in his lock. Somewhere along the way that sound had become the nicest sound in the world.

"That took longer than expected," he remarked, eyes still in his book, but smile firmly in place, when she slumped down next to him onto his couch, overladen with paper bags and a heavy sigh.

"I _know_, my feet are killing me. And Mama's gonna kill me, too. I blew all of my allowance today and I only got it yesterday," she cringed, then dove into one of the bags and held up a giant pink sweater with a gray rabbit on it that looked like it was way too big for her, maybe even too big for him.

"But look!" she cried in delight and held it to her chest, pinning it in place with her chin. "Isn't this cute?!"

He lowered his book into his lap, turned a little sideways in his seat and lifted one eyebrow over the rim of his glasses, but couldn't help the amused quirk of his lips.

"Are you intending to grow into that?"

She rolled her eyes and gave him a _look_. "It's oversized, Mamo-chan. It's supposed to fall off of me."

He lifted the second eyebrow, too, and she put the sweater back into its bag with an irritated huff.

"You know nothing about fashion, Mamo-chan."

So he kept being told. He smirked. "So, you blew all your money on a sweater meant to fit five people?"

_This_ particular look thrown his way held even more irritation than the last, which was a feat all in itself. Then she gestured at the myriad of bags strewn around her and half-falling off his couch with an irritated shake of her head that clearly meant to say, 'are you being daft?!'

"But!" she called in sudden delight, a charming smile overtaking all of her face in rapid speed, then diving into a smaller of the bags. "I got you something!"

She pulled out a bunched up stack of cotton between both fists and held it under his nose. "Tadaaa!" she beamed, hopping and wriggling on her knees.

She unfolded the fabric in front of him and his eyebrows rose even higher.

Sailor Moon print boxer briefs. Some of them had just her brooches, one had her whole face where his dick would go. One flip of fabric, and she showed him there was more. Tuxedo Mask themed. Roses on his dick. His own stilised, cartoon-ized and super deformed face on his butt.

Oh joy…

"I got myself matching ones, just so you know."

_That_, on the other hand, should definitely not excite him as much as it did, and she should never ever know, and he fought hard, so hard, to keep his expression neutral, and just nod.

She snickered all the same.

In an effort to save grace, he leaned forward and deposited his book on the table, then took off his glasses and stacked them neatly right on top.

When he turned back, one leg bent underneath him to face her completely, she was mirroring his position. Or maybe he was mirroring hers, and he leaned his cheek against the back of his couch in the same way she did, just the smallest space away from her.

She was smiling at him in the warmest possible way and it made him feel like bursting at the seams and melt all at the same time.

Then she sighed, and burrowed her cheek slightly further into the cushion, eyes and smile on him, and there was nothing whatsoever in the world that could hide his adoration from his face at that particular moment. He could see that clearly reflected in the way her smile turned ever so slightly more amused.

But then her lips pursed, and she blew out a huff. "I gotta get home for dinner soon."

He nodded, then moved a little, lifting his head from the cushion by her face. "Gimme your feet."

She blinked.

"You said they were killing you?" he elaborated with a slow smile.

The smile she sent him this time was one pure beam of happy sunshine. She wriggled her feet happily as she thrust them almost straight into the air and then plopped her legs quite unceremoniously into his lap. He chuckled, but peeled the ruffled pink socks off one by one immediately.

He was good at giving foot massages. He'd been doing it for years, now. She moaned so prettily every time he did, and with almost anything, he'd put quite a lot of research into it. Foot reflexology was a thing, he was quite sure of it, judging by her reactions. And well, she enjoyed it.

His smile smoothed over at his first stroke of her right foot. He inhaled deeply in a sigh as he carefully traced each and every tiny white line that scattered the sole of her foot just like it did its twin.

He had a curious relationship with these scars, had built it over the last two years and then some (excluding, of course, that big, deadly gap), ever since the long night that she acquired them on his behalf.

His princess had walked through a blizzard and an endless maze of thorns barefoot to free him when he had failed her once again, and it had marked her skin forever.

He used to hate these scars. They used to only represent his shame. He'd spent that morning tending to them, trying his damndest that they wouldn't form, these scars, but failed her then, too. A week afterwards, he'd partaken in his first workshop to learn how to give foot massages semi-professionally, and bought his first book on specific muscle relaxation techniques. If he couldn't erase these scars, he could at least make sure these feet would never hurt again.

Now, over time, her feet had become kind of his. He knew her scars like constellations, and while the shame still lingered, these scars also were a testament to her love for him, and of the lengths she was literally willing to go for him. They were a manifest reminder of what he had and was never willing to let go.

With practiced touch, he'd started kneading and bending and prodding and flexing with a strong grip and circular motions and expert knowledge on muscles and sinnew and Usagi. Within minutes he was all smirk and she was a moaning mess, head thrown back over the arm of his couch and making sounds that weren't at all unfamiliar.

He firmly pressed his thumb into the soft skin where her tibial met her plantar medial nerve and rubbed and smirked at the way she writhed in expected pleasure under his touch like always when he did this.

"I can feed you too, you know?" he said.

She slightly lifted her head from the arm of his couch, and he flicked his eyes up over the top of her feet to gaze at hers. "You could stay," he murmured softly.

Without looking away from her eyes, he pressed his lips to the one fine, longest of all her scars that ran across the raised arteries on the side of her sole, the one he could find in the pitch dark and from memory and if he'd been blind for ten years.

"Mmmmhh," she hummed. "I guess I could."

He smiled, pressed another kiss to the same spot, and then another.

She giggled, wiggled her foot, and he looked back up in confusion.

"Stubble." She smiled. "Tickles."

His lips flew up into a smirk. "Oh?" he said, utterly exaggerated, and with that he tightened his hold around her foot and rubbed his cheek against the whole sole of it.

She shrieked and kicked on cue, and he did it again with a laugh of his own, holding onto her kicking foot with an iron grip, and they were being totally, awkwardly, ridiculously weird.

It was blissful happiness and it was home and his heart felt full and bursting and Nehelenia and Galaxia were just a dim, distant, inconsequential memory far, far, far in the back of his mind.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Post Stars
> 
> I remember writing this one vividly. When I wrote this, I was sitting on a nightbus from Germany to the Netherlands to meet Tina Century in the flesh and was totally excited. Plus, the theme of this kiss was something MamaladyKT had talked about a lot; that she wished to see it seen in a fic so badly. So really, I connect this one to both of these lovely ladies in my head!


	21. A Kiss In A Place Of Insecurity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sending you into the weekend with an absolutely new kiss! Happy Friday, guys! I hope you like this one!

* * *

A Kiss In A Place Of Insecurity

* * *

Normally, it was the other way around. Normally, Usagi accompanied _him _to social events, made them more bearable for him; oftentimes even enjoyable. He, on the other hand, rarely did the same for her. Mamoru realised this suddenly; it hadn't ever before been conscious in his mind. Now, it really much was.

He felt completely out of place.

And that meant something, considering the fact that actually, the people he would call his closest friends were present in this room.

But he wasn't _with _them today. Not _really_. This wasn't an afternoon at the Fruit Parlor, or going out to support Michiru and Haraku in their careers together. This was altogether different.

"You _sure _you don't have any talents to contest with?" Minako sidled up to him out of nowhere, clad in some outrageously bright outfit that mirrored those of the other girls exactly (and Makoto's seamstress-talents were bigger than he'd assumed), and with her even brighter clipboard. "We could use some male models you know. Only girls seem to sign up so far."

He shook his head at her in exasperation with a grim glare.

Minako just rolled her eyes, elbowed him in the side, and left him in peace at his wallflower spot near the doors.

He watched her join Makoto back at the stage - a surprisingly gigantuan monstrosity in the back of this surprisingly enormous school gym that was lined with further booths - where Makoto was diligently hanging rows and rows of flowery, pretty bunting, before she skipped off to chat up some other unsuspecting victim with her clipboard.

Usagi appeared with a box of more of the same bunting, hopped up the ladder on the other side of the stage, and called across the space to Makoto for instructions.

It was tradition, apparently, that the third year students organise the talent show that Juuban High was famous for. He hadn't heard anything else for weeks, it was the girl's constant topic, and Makoto had sewn 'staff' outfits, bunting, made honeycomb garlands and Minako had planned half the acts.

Ever so often, Usagi would look over the crowd and search him out. When she did, her whole face lit up, and she sent a beaming smile at him that would make the corners of his lips lift and his heart fill, but then she'd look away again, busy as she was.

Ami was at a booth the computer club was manning somewhere in the main building, and even though Unazuki and Motoki had promised to join him for this visit of the girl's school fair, they were nowhere to be seen yet, seeing as he was about an hour early.

He was happy to support them, that really wasn't it.

He'd offered to help, just so he wouldn't stand around so helplessly lost, but Makoto and Usagi has insisted he just enjoy himself. And so he stood at the back and watched and did not enjoy himself.

"Um, sir, if it's not an inconvenience, could you unlock the teacher's room for us? We need to get the lighting."

Mamoru rolled his eyes and glared outright at the same boy he'd been glaring at the past three times he'd approached him. Young. He looked so _young _to be a third year high school student. How could this boy be about to graduate?! How could this boy be only about three or four years younger than him?! A head shorter than even Usagi, and Usagi was _tiny_.

"_Still_ not a teacher," Mamoru growled out, losing the manners this time. He looked down at himself self-consciously. He was wearing his pink shirt. Minako used to say only the green jacket made him appear so much older than he was. That the pink shirt was safe.

The boy looked back up, startled, and flinched, now truly looking at Mamoru. "Oh, I'm sorry to bother you, sir."

Mamoru glowered at the 'sir', and sighed as the boy scurried off.

He didn't even know that boy's name. He was pretty sure he'd seen him before, pretty sure he was in Usagi's class, but he really had no idea who he was.

Usagi wouldn't have that problem, he realized. Usagi knew more of his co-eds than he did. Ever since Edward's party - his first ever college party - that got interrupted by a daimon, back when she was only a third year middle schooler, he'd been asked to bring his 'charming' girlfriend whenever he got invited to _anything_. That only increased when, in the same year, Kobayashi had met her too - socialite numero uno at the Mita campus - and soon Usagi was on first name basis with half his peers, including people _he'd _never talked to, and it wasn't strange these days for _him _to be invited as the tag-along when _she _was invited to his college parties.

(Not that he had any trouble talking to his peers. He didn't. He was polite, he was respected, he liked a lot of them, he met people for study groups and helped them out with their papers and labs... He just wasn't... _Usagi_.)

But he realised now he'd not nearly returned the effort for her. Not at all. Not even a little.

And so he stood around in a flood of he peers and felt absolutely out of place.

Minako walked back in with her clipboard and a boy with an instrument case at her side and Mamoru stepped into her path.

"Do you need any help with anything?" he asked desperately.

Minako blinked at him. "At… chatting people up that you don't know and convincing them to fill the last free slots and spontaneously perform in front of the whole district?" she asked with raised eyebrows.

The poor guy's eyes widened at the mention of the 'whole district,' stagefright claiming him quite vividly and visibly, and Mamoru sighed and murmured a "Nevermind," and walked back off.

Too late, he realized he could have introduced himself to stage-fright guy.

When Usagi looked around to find him this time, she jumped. He'd stopped standing right behind her with a pout.

"Can I help you?" he asked again.

Her startled eyes morphed into concern in one smooth, abrupt transition and she stepped one rung down her step-ladder, and her hand flew away from the bunting and up to his arm and curled into the pink fabric of his shirt.

The bunting slipped down a little, but held, and she was still not at his height even though she was still standing on that first rung of her ladder.

"Is everything ok?" she asked, searching his eyes, closer to him than usual.

He frowned a little too darkly. "I don't know anyone here and it's awkward and your classmate keeps mistaking me for a teacher."

"What?" she gasped, appalled, and stroked her thumb across his arm. "Who?!"

"The guy who postponed puberty until college." His voice was all the petty.

She snorted. "Ah. Riko-kun," she nodded. "Don't mind him, he's a bit scatter-brained."

He sighed again. One of her classmates - he had _no _idea what her name was - scolded Usagi to not get distracted, they were running out of time, and he pouted harder for it.

But Usagi didn't pay her classmate no mind, instead she cocked her head and studied him with concern and love and intense care. "You're totally uncomfortable," she concluded. It was a fact, not a question.

He shrugged. He knew he hid it well, he always did. He probably was back to looking like an arrogant douche, but Usagi saw right through him.

"Motoki and Unazuki are gonna be here soon," Usagi promised, and he wanted to snort. He felt a bit stupid, and her need to reassure him as if he was a child didn't help. "And once I'm done with setting up I have time between presenting the acts! Minako and I keep switching."

He nodded, buried his hands in his pockets, and turned to walk off. She was busy. He'd be fine.

"Hey," she stopped him, slid her hand from his bicep to his chest, and he turned back to find her lips at his cheek - once, twice, thrice, until he smiled.

"Thank you for coming today," she smiled at him.

It was that warm smile. That Usagi smile. That sweetest of all smiles. And his lips couldn't help but curl up and his heart couldn't help but fill with warmth and who the hell cared that he was out of place here? He was right where he belonged.

He leaned down to press a short, barely lingering peck to her lips, as innocent as he could get away with in her school gym, and when he retreated, she was grinning.

"Of course," he smiled back.

Somewhere behind him he could hear the obnoxiously annoying voice of that boy whisper-hush to someone whether _Usagi _was kissing a _teacher_? - and he rolled his eyes in exasperation.

"Can I _please _help you?" he asked again, desperately, and this time she laughed, and held out the bunting.

"All the way around," she ordered, and he sighed in utter relief, grabbed her hips and lifted her off the step-ladder, and took over.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Post-Stars
> 
> (Also why yes this IS a prompt to make all of you write me snippets of Mamoru's college parties that USAGI gets invited to.)


	22. A Kiss In A Rush Of Adrenaline

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Monday, guys! Here's another new kiss for you. And again – thank you to everyone who still appreciates these :) I'm writing for you!

* * *

A Kiss In A Rush Of Adrenaline

* * *

Her heart was _pounding _in her chest and she _ran_.

Shitshitshitshit.

That youma was practically _raining _fire on her and where was Sailor Mars when you needed her?! And the others, too?!

Sailor Moon screamed as one of the fire missiles hit her shoulder blade and she fell to her knees, skidding across the floor, trying to get _away _—

She'd be _toast _if she stopped now, pain or not, she knew that.

Behind her, the youma cackled – or maybe it was Zoisite, floating obnoxiously above the battlefield full of glee in a rain of cherry blossom petals.

Sailor Moon howled, when another, if smaller fireball hit her at the back of the knee, and then that was it. She collapsed, screaming, terrified, and braced herself — arms covering her face, cowering. She couldn't run fast enough now, she'd be—

But then she wasn't. Then there was a warm, broad chest and the fluttering of thick fabric and someone else's voice as it grunted in pain in her stead.

Her heart stuttered on her tongue as she took in his chiseled face right above her, the hair that fell into it, lips and eyes and jaw contorted in pain. For _her—_

No. This wouldn't do.

In a rush of adrenaline, ignoring the searing pain in her back, her knee, she yanked at his arm and pulled him back up, clutched at his hand, and then she just kept on running.

They couldn't stay here.

But still it kept on raining stupid, mean, painful fire and she yelped and breathed hard and she was _scared_ goddammit and she hurt and raised her arms over her head, but then there was his cape as he ran with her, held it above her.

He shoved her aside, a full-body tackle, when the next blast of fire formed into a screaming, living, angry, _burning _entity all on its own, heading straight for Sailor Moon.

"_No_!" she screamed, feral and wide-eyed — he'd get _hit _like that — and with a yank more powerful than the actual strength in her muscles, she pulled at his cape and literally _tossed _him aside.

The fire missed him by a fraction. But it also missed her.

They looked at the blackened, seared spot where he'd just been with wide-eyed horror, and then at each other. It was a second, no more: Zoisite yelled disappointed and angry instructions, and for just a second there, the fire stilled.

Usagi was too slow to react. Tuxedo Mask wasn't.

He was on his feet immediately, hefting her up like a doll, and one powerful jump of those graceful legs and they were in the air.

"Now," he whispered, and her heart stuttered once more.

She nodded. He didn't let go.

Still in the air, still in his arms, where he carried her up where she needed to be — _above _the youma; no attack from beneath was able to permeate the fire, Usagi raised the Moon stick high above her head and screamed her attack.

Tuxedo Mask held on tight, withstood the blast back from the brute force that emitted from her weapon. As if _she _was _his _weapon, he held her aloft, gloves pressing into her hip and thigh. By the time they fell back towards the ground, his cape flapping around them, the youma was gone, and Zoisite shouting in rage.

Her feet didn't touch the ground, only his did. His footfall was silent, stealthy, and he bent in the knee and jumped them back high into the sky, hands flexing against her skin while the Moon Stick hadn't even stopped glowing yet. One fluid motion and she was more securely in his arms as he jumped again and whisked her away.

Her heart was still pounding, maybe even more so, when his feet again touched solid surface on a concrete roof. When he lowered her slowly to her feet, her back and leg was throbbing, her breath was erratic, but she didn't notice either.

She noticed his terrified and spooked eyes, the way he checked her injuries and forgot about his, the way her heart was hammering away from both the fright and his proximity and it was a cocktail in her veins that made her reckless and stupid and too forward.

Before she even noticed what it was that she was doing, her gloved hand curled around the back of his neck and she yanked him down to her. His top hat fell away, thudding onto the concrete, before his lips even connected with hers.

A surprised noise bubbled from his throat right into her mouth, his body growing rigid and then _soft_, so soft, and he melted against her. His gloved hands settled against her waist and curled, pulling at her, and his lips finally kissed her back.

Soft. His lips very awfully soft, his tongue intoxicatingly warm.

It was her who ended the kiss just as it was her who had started it.

She didn't know what had gotten into her. It was a short explosion of insanity which she stopped as quickly as her sense came back to her; and even if it felt like much longer, it couldn't have been more than ten seconds. Her face was hot before she even withdrew. But she still managed to whisper a breathy "thank you," against his lips.

His lips chased hers, just a moment, barely a heartbeat long, and it made her heart pound even harder.

"For what?" he croaked. His voice for once lacked all authority, all grandeur. It was soft and high-pitched and sounded like that of a boy. A very confused, very overwhelmed boy.

It made her nerves calm down strangely, as she settled back onto the heels of her boots and smiled up at him, flushed as she was. But her voice remained strong.

"For saving my life again."

He cleared his voice, straightened back up, but didn't move away from her. His gloved hand flew to his lips, however. Hovering but not touching.

"Yo- you're welcome," he croaked again.

And then he nodded, swallowing, and the grandeur was back. Maybe she imagined it, but it looked like he was flicking his cape in quite the _extra _extra way as he turned to leave.

But she stopped him before he could get too far.

"Tuxedo Mask…" she called out softly, and he stopped at the edge of the roof where he'd moved to bend his knees into a crouch for a jump.

He straightened back up, turned back to her immediately, a bit too fast, even.

"Hm?" he rasped.

She couldn't read his eyes. But there was…

She didn't know what she wanted to say. Just that she really didn't want him to leave. And that she should probably apologize for kissing him.

But she didn't. Instead she sighed and said something entirely different.

"I hope we can be friends," she said in a voice that betrayed her nervous heart completely. Too steady and strong.

He touched his lips - they curled, and he looked at her almost amused. "You want to be friends?" he asked, as if it was funny.

She pressed her lips together, regarding him with a frown, and his look instantly sobered.

And then they just stood there in that painfully charged atmosphere, neither saying anything, neither turning to go, and his eyes looked as wary and searching as her whole body felt.

"I don't want to be your enemy," she eventually whispered.

He opened his lips, closed them. Her heart jumped when he took that step back towards her.

But when he stooped back down, his lips didn't touch against hers - they touched against the shell of her ear instead.

"Me neither," he whispered, breath hot against her ear.

And then that theatrical flap of his cape, and he violently jumped away from her and into the night.

She watched him go, heart pounding harder in her chest than it had when she ran from that youma.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Classic, Pre-Reveal
> 
> (Because we need more Tux and Sailor Moon interactions, because we need more female agency, because the anime deserves a bit of manga in it, because these two could use a bit more chemistry pre-reveal in the anime! Hope you enjoyed!)


	23. A Kiss In Relief

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Tuesday guys! A new kiss again (in fact the next kisses will be new as well; there's only one kiss this week that you already know!) – let me know what you think! :)

* * *

A Kiss In Relief

* * *

Usagi burst through the green door of his apartment with all the strength and intensity of Sailor Moon and tackled him on his bed. Before he even had the chance to react, to compute, to _anything_, she had planted herself on top of him and started peppering his face in kisses.

"Are you ok? _Are you ok?!_" She mumbled desperately into his skin, puncturing her every word with hard, pressed kisses from her firmly puckered lips.

He sighed in deepest relief, lifted his hands and wrapped them around her waist and pressed her warm body to him, and leaned his face firmly into her onslaught, breathing her in.

He was ok, now that she was here and safe and alive.

The cats had jumped off the bed the second missile Usagi had launched, and he was perfectly content to simply keep lying here and thank her for saving his whole planet while he was rendered sick and useless.

"I am," he sighed at her, slinging his arms around her even tighter, yellow fabric of his pyjamas against the green of her sweatshirt. "Are _you_ ok?"

He felt her nod against him even when her lips were still firmly pressed against his temple, and he took the opportunity to press his face into the junction of her neck and inhaling her deeply.

Here. Safe. Was it over? Had they won? They must have, he could feel it.

It was only later, after she'd calmed down but remained in his arms for the simple reason that he refused to slacken his hold on her, that she told him of the fight, of the Golden Crystal, of Helios, of Nehelenia and her revenge on the White Moon Family, Nehelenia who had been dying but wasn't dead, wasn't gone. Of Usagi jumping off a platform that was floating into space because a dying Nehelenia had kicked Chibiusa's body off of it, only to plummet in a free fall down to Earth.

He'd frozen. Clamped his arms around her even tighter yet in shock. "_What_," his lips had shot.

Usagi shook her head against his throat, curled against him. "I got her. We didn't die."

But her voice wasn't strong. The fright sat deep, and he could feel it vibrating through her without anything to anchor it.

"Usako…" he breathed.

He couldn't be there for her during this nightmare. But he sure as hell could be here now.

And so this time it were his hands and lips that did the onslaught, hands on her cheeks, and her chin and the bridge of her nose and her eyes and the nape of her neck and the crook of her collarbone, and lips traveling it all to check, to reaffirm, to tie her to his heart and never let her go.

"It's over," she murmured in a small voice against his kisses, but it was to reassure herself as much as it was to reassure him, and the tears that bubbled from her eyelids and the kisses he pressed to those immediately were a testimony to the fact they were both well aware of the nature of her words. "We're good. They're gone," she begged.

He felt her breathe out shakily, every muscle in her body still poised for fight but loosening in relief under his touch so very slowly. Her tears against his skin. And so he kissed, and kissed, and kissed, just as she had done before, and soon she was kissing back again. That frantic, panicked sort of relief that they both didn't want to be so frightfully familiar with.

And so she pushed him flat back against his mattress or maybe he did that to her, and let their kisses ground them. Kiss after kiss after kiss until they all ran together in a frantic mess of tongue and lips and gasps and teeth. Deep, long, frightened, _confirming_. One more and it would be ok, just one more, and one more again. One more – hands yanking at the back of her knees to pull her closer to him, to press her into him, shaking bones and panic behind eyelids that sat deep and stayed and they grabbed at each other like an anchor.

We're good. We're ok.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Super S
> 
> So yeah you all remember how Mamoru was put into bed and dying for all of the Super S finale, right? This is quite obviously right after.


	24. A Kiss In Danger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand happy Wednesday guys! Thank you for still sticking around with me and stuff :)

* * *

A Kiss In Danger

* * *

"I won't tell if you won't tell…"

He whimpered, shivering. He was absolutely overwhelmed, totally turned on, and completely terrified.

Her mouth was at his ear and her hand skimmed his neck and his collarbone in the unbuttoned collar or his shirt, and really, they should know better. If there were any two people in the universe that should despise having to hide like that, it should be them.

He had no clue why this was so delicious.

He cried out a series of high-pitched, whispered, tortured sounds, when her lips once again wrapped against the junction of his neck, her tongue pressing against his skin before her teeth sunk and nipped and _sucked_ and _shit—_

He bit his lip. "Usako," he groaned out. It was supposed to be a warning, instead it came out like a beg. Just as his hand at her hip was supposed to push her away, and yet instead his fingers twitched into her skin violently with every brush of her lips and tongue and teeth as he grabbed at her to pull her closer all the same.

"I can be quiet," she whispered, and licked a line against his mutilated skin, soothing it.

He'd have a hickey. And it wouldn't even be the most evident proof against him.

The collar of his white shirt was wide open; Usagi's temptress fingers has undone the top ones long ago. He didn't even have to look down to see the bright red smears of her sinfully sexy lipstick on his chest, on the corners of his shirt, to know they went up all the way to his throat and chin and mouth, marking him.

Her own smeared, swollen, painfully _arousing_ lips were enough confirmation to know he looked certainly a whole lot worse.

"We can be quick," she whispered in his ear and tugged on his sleeve, and he was a tightly coiled mess of barely hanging on to his sanity.

"We _can't_. Usako..." he breathed back, but it was a wonton, utterly seduced and pitiful sigh, and his hand on her hip was fast slipping down the hem of her little white dress.

She didn't help matters by hitching her leg up and around his thigh, helping his hand along to slip underneath her skirt and dig into her thigh.

The sounds he made were desperate and defeated and way, way, _way_ too wanting

"I want you," she breathed. Her voice was thick and low, and she underlined her words with a soft bite at his lower-lip, pulling it away from him.

"Your father," his last grasp on sanity rasped out against her puffy, perfect, sexy lips.

Her tongue ran against his lower lip, so slowly he shivered. "He's not here," she eventually whispered, then drawing the tip of her tongue along his upper lip on her way back.

He bit his lip, fought her tongue over it. "He's _right outside_," he breathed into her mouth. "He's _bound_ to start looking for us. He'll—"

And he moaned, deep and guttural because her tongue drew into his mouth and stole his, and she tasted of the sweet berry wine she'd drunk all night and of the most potent drug in the world.

There were dozens and dozens of Kenji Tsukino's colleagues outside. His bosses and clients and the whole publishing world, basically, all in this brightly lit event hall that separated them just by the door to this darkened conference room, where she was sitting at the edge of this table and he was standing pressed against her temptingly spread legs and anyone might come in. This illustrious, glamorous event Usagi had had to beg and beg until her father had relented and given her tickets for it, on the condition she'd be on her best behavior here tonight.

Well, she definitely was on her best behavior, really. He was just pretty sure her father would not agree if anyone were to find them here.

"He'll never know," she promised things she couldn't promise.

"This is dangerous," he whispered even when he huffed out another of these high-pitched tortured sighs when her hands snaked down between them and to his belt. "He's gonna castrate me. He's never gonna allow me back into your house, Usako," he warned. But his voice was a drawn-out begging wail, and it wasn't begging her to stop. Not at all.

"We'll be fine," she promised, and popped his belt open with a metallic little click that seemed to shut off his brain, because he absolutely, totally, completely gave in.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Post-Stars
> 
> And yeah I totally sometimes take these prompts in ways they weren't supposed to go lol.


	25. A Kiss As A "Yes"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I had an EXHAUSTING Thursday and I hope yours was a little more relaxed. Either way, I hope this kiss cheers you up!

* * *

A Kiss As A "Yes"

* * *

Most of Mamoru's kisses were a no.

_Just this one.  
_ _Don't let anyone see.  
_ _Let's be quick.  
_ _Don't go further._

He didn't even really mean it. It wasn't that he didn't want that sort of affection. That he didn't want her kisses. Not at _all_, no. And yet, this was his default. His kisses spoke in nos.

When he turned his eyes away and into his books when she snuggled against him. When he ended kisses first, every time. When he put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back when it was 'done', sometimes. When he didn't… When he turned every which way in a clearly deserted greenhouse at a flower show and unable to enjoy the moment, her proximity, and instead had just… left. With her puckered lips waiting for him, and were instead to be pranked by her friends (and future daughter).

His kisses were too often a no, and he really didn't like it that way.

Always a 'not allowed to'. Too often a 'you shouldn't have that'. The latter was something his mind whispered at him from that dark place, that toxic place that wouldn't leave from his thoughts however hard he tried to banish it, that only knew isolation and abandonment and was secretly waiting for those ever-present threats to return and fill him up. He knew listening to it would only ever hurt. He knew listening to it was not only hurting him. But listening to it came as second nature. It was always right there, easiest too grasp.

_Don't.  
_ _Stay back.  
_ _This is too far.  
_ _Play it safe.  
_ _Reel it back in.  
_ _You could burn.  
_ _(You might like burning too much.)_

_She doesn't mean it.  
_ _This is too much, it's not appropriate.  
_ _She's just affectionate.  
_ _She can't actually want you in the way she implies.  
_ _What if she thinks you're pushy?  
_ _She's better off without you._

He liked to tell himself some of these whispers at least came from a place of respect. But really, he knew better. He knew they came from inhibition and a wonky relationship with intimacy.

There was, after all - if Usagi had taught him anything at all - nothing disrespectful about a kiss that came from love and pure intention. They weren't wrong. Kisses like that were worship and savoring and love, that's what her heart spoke. They weren't tainted. At least they shouldn't be.

Usagi's kisses tended to be quite overwhelming yeses.

Her kisses were never restrained, never holding back. They were free, jubilant, exuberant, screaming waves of open affection and acceptance. They were ... full. They were full and filling and promising of more and happy and bliss. They were were waking up early on a Sunday morning and realising you were allowed to stay in bed for however long you might decide. They were the first day of vacation where everything is free choice and allowed to go slow and peaceful. They're the feeling you have when you finished something important early and well and to your fullest satisfaction and then have energy to tackle more. They're sunsets when you're looking forward to the night, they're knowing there's a second serving to that delicious dish you're eating right now, they're waking up with longing but then remembering that you were allowed to _have _now, to _keep _now.

There was more where they came from, always more, always uplifting.

They're her standing on her tiptoes with her heart open on her lips and angled up at him and only him. They were starting kisses and demanding kisses and not wanting them to end. They were the small blush on her cheeks right before and right after, they were her curled hands pulling him back towards her even when he was already retreating.

They were home and unconditional and came without an end. An endless overflowing well of gentle, giving love. Always more. Always for him.

There was nothing disrespectful about that. Nothing, nothing at all. There was only acceptance and belonging that he could find there.

Her kisses told different stories than his.

_Give me more. Always just one more._

_I can't get enough of you.  
_ _I'll always be here offering.  
_ _I adore you.  
_ _I enjoy you, I cherish you, I miss you.  
_ _I want all of you.  
_ _I love you._

And _jeeze _how he yearned for these stories in her kiss. How everything in him ached and pulled to get more of what she could so freely give and he felt so ashamed to be so bad at.

But he wanted to. He wanted to so badly.

And so sometimes, he tried.

"Usako…" he whispered towards that stunning sunset she'd begged for him to stay with her and watch after the world had calmed down and Tuxedo Mask and Sailor Moon were no longer needed. He flexed his gloved fingers and they found hers responding, always responding.

"Hm?"

She barely moved. Her booted foot dangled every so slightly off the orangy-red steel beam that Tokyo Tower was made of by half. Her head on his shoulder moved across his cape, her tiara catching in his hair a little as she angled her chin up just a tiny fraction in reaction, her cheek moving against him.

He turned fully to her, this time.

The golden glow of the sunset caught in her hair and made it shine like an otherworldly treasure. Her lips were pink and plump and right there and it all hurt in his chest because he wanted that his kisses tasted like this sunset for her, too, and yet he never managed.

He stared.

It was when she shifted against him slightly more, a quizzical look in her eyes, that she moved her eyes from the view of the falling sun to him, and he moved his hand from hers where she'd cradled it between both of hers in her lap. He moved it to stroke up her throat to her chin, and wondered where the sudden hammering heart was coming from.

He sighed when he leaned down, breathed against her lips and touched them with all the softness he could put in it, cradling her face to him and trying to put into his mouth and lips and tongue what these lips were never really able to adequately convey, be it through words or affection or the brush of his kiss.

But he tried, he tried very, very hard.

He didn't end this kiss. And so they missed the last rays of sunset, and his Tuxedo ended up rumpled and his lips tender to the touch and both of them out of breath. But when they eventually let go, she stroked her thumb across his lips and stayed close and didn't go, didn't retreat, because he hadn't pushed her away.

He liked it when she stayed.

So, yes. Sometimes, he managed. Sometimes, he allowed himself to let Tide Usagi pull him under and get lost in that wave of warm, comforting bliss of feeling so unconditionally, fully, overwhelmingly wanted, and he vowed once again to kiss more yeses, too.

He just needed to brace himself a little. So his terrified heart could wait with open arms. But he got better at that all the time.

Because she deserved them. Those kisses that were yeses. Because he wanted her to have them even if there were all these invisible strings forever trying to hold him back.

_I love you too.  
_ _You're my home.  
_ _I'm trying. I'm trying so, so hard._

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Setting Tag is uh…. Not so obvious today lol? Take your pick I get, this fits everything from S onwards.
> 
> Anyway, all the kisses to you guys! Would love to hear from you!


	26. A Kiss As An Apology

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand happy Friday, everyone! This is kiss is set in the beginning Episode 58 – one of the last ones of the first R arc – and it's another one that some of you guys remember from tumblr. I hope you enjoy it all the same!

* * *

A Kiss As An Apology

* * *

Usagi stared dumbly after Natsumi and Seijuro and the way they rushed off, effectively leaving her alone with Mamoru.

They really were extremely weird sometimes, these two…

But now that they were gone that meant…

With a start, her eyes whipped up to him and she felt her cheeks warm.

He was looking after the siblings as surprised as she'd been, just before she realised they left them in a place that could _kinda_ be viewed as a date.

Maybe, _just_ maybe…

Mamoru blinked down the road, standing in front of the bistro table she sat at, now alone. Then his eyes settled on her and into a smile.

"Well then," he said with that warm expression and a nod, "it was nice to see you, I'll–"

She interrupted him. "Do you wanna sit?"

He threw her a look she couldn't read.

She felt her cheeks flush even hotter and fought the urge to hide behind her stuffed crepe.

"I've just been ditched. You could keep me company while I finish." That sounded reasonable, right? That sounded better than crazy stalker Natsumi, right? Her reborn prince didn't think she was a crazy stalker too, right?

"Or you could get your own…" she trailed off and her voice had grown dejected.

Who was she kidding? He wasn't gonna stay. He didn't see her that way. He never would. Usagi wasn't someone Mamoru was interrested in, he'd made that very clear.

"I'm not much of a crepe person," he said with a shrug, looking down at her.

Her shoulders fell. "Right," she mumbled, eyes downcast. "Well, have a good day, then, Mamoru-sa–"

Her voice caught when he settled down into Seijuro's vacated chair with an inclined head and his nose in wrinkles in his smile, and her breath caught again. It was the cutest smile she'd ever seen on him - and she remembered a whole other lifetime of his cute smiles.

"I do have a few minutes to keep you company," he trailed off. It sounded… off. That smile stayed, tho.

She flushed. She must have been bright red at this point.

She took a big bite out of her crepe, because food had always been her saviour, and this crepe was filled with strawberries and cream and chunks of cheesecake.

She swallowed, eyeing him carefully. He was watching her eat with a somewhat amused expression. She narrowed her eyes.

"So, you and Natsumi…"

He cocked his head to the side, nodded behind her.

"I ran into her at Book-Off," he said, meaning the secondhand book shop she knew to be located almost straight behind her. Ah.

"So it wasn't a date," she said in a voice that was way too relieved.

His brows furrowed even when his lip quirked up on one side. His answer came in an amused, short, half-laugh. "No," he said, eyes crinkling.

"Well, good," she said in a huff. And then got miffed because he wasn't returning the question, and obviously it hadn't been a date but SHE was the one sitting at a bistro with two milkshakes on the table and one of them abandoned, and he could at least have the decency to get jealous too, right?!

He didn't. He just smiled that confusing smile at her.

She frowned at him. Then she lifted her crepe, half eaten but still brimming with lush strawberries and shiny, milky, luscious cream. "Did you wanna try?" she offered.

He couldn't know, he couldn't know that this was a show of her deepest love and affection, the grand price of all proof of her undying love, because she Did Not Share Food, and so she took it as a personal affront when he laughed and shook his head 'No'.

"I wouldn't dream of getting between you and your food, Odango Atama," he purred at her with that crinkle he'd always addressed her with when he teased her, no matter the lifetime or stolen year.

She huffed at him, all the 'suit yourself' in her look. "It's my second, you can try," she said with a glare, and stuck it closer into his field of vision.

He threw her that amused, slightly freaked out, partly charmed look that held way too much 'oh you silly, adorable girl' in it for her taste, but after another shake of her crepe, he reluctantly leaned forward and took a bite.

He scrunched up his nose again, and a tiny fleck of cream stuck to his cheek as he chewed and swallowed, then shrugged.

"It's good," he said, completely underwhelmingly.

Usagi rolled her eyes, he didn't know what was good if it yelled at him in the street. She was living proof of that.

Her eyes stuck like glue to the bit of cream on his cheek.

She knew a life where she would have leaned over to kiss it away.

She bit angrily into her crepe.

"You don't know what's good," she said her thoughts aloud, puncturing it with a huff.

He shrugged. "I told you I'm not a crepe person," he said.

She finished off her crepe in one big bite and crumpled up the pink paper as she chewed.

"But thanks for sharing your food with a jerk, Odango." He winked.

But it took her completely aback, she recoiled with a stare.

No… He… He didn't _remember_, did he?

And if he did, did he only remember THAT? It was the only good thing about this do-over! Her second chance at not being a total brat to him, so maybe one day he'd look at her and actually like her.

"You're not a jerk," she whispered, eyes wide.

His look changed, turning confused, but a small smile kept lingering.

"It was one of the first things you said to me," he said. "At that crater?"

She blinked. Oh. Right.

Turns out she was already a total brat to him before she realised she got a do-over. Brilliant.

She sighed, shoulders falling, lips falling, posture falling, and dropped against the back of her chair to address him in a silent pout.

His eyes didn't stray, lingered on her, even when they grew more confused by the second.

With a sigh, and because she really had nothing more to lose than what she'd already lost, she got up, gathered her purse, and stopped next to him.

It was her turn to look down at him.

With a sad smile, she reached out, and brushed the bit of cream from his cheek with a careful touch. He jumped in his seat, eyes turning wide.

She replaced her thumb with her lips, leaning down and brushing his skin just above his lip in a soft kiss.

"You're not a jerk," she repeated in a whisper by his ear. "Not at all. I'm sorry for saying that."

When she straightened up, he was looking at her as if she'd paralyzed him.

She shot him another unsure smile, tucked a stray bit of hair behind her ears. "Thanks for keeping me company," she said with a smile, then turned to go.

When she looked back at him across the street, he was still sitting there and staring after her.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: R, Makaiju Arc
> 
> Because you know, I wouldhave loved for them to have a few more moments like this one during one of my favorite arcs! Anyway, sending you into the weekend with this!


	27. A Kiss As A Suggestion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an older kiss again: It's set before the first scene in Episode 60 in R, and can be read as a continuation of my Little Moment "Speechless" (but also totally works alone). Happy Monday everyone!
> 
> Also, it's Antigone2's birthday today! (You know, in case you wanted to drop by her tumblr ask box or her numerous review boxes to drop her some appreciation on this day for all the amazing usamamo content that woman has provided us with over the years ;) Happy birthday, love!

* * *

A Kiss As A Suggestion

* * *

"Play a game with me," she'd announced with a glare, standing in front of his green apartment door in a green dress and a green cardigan as he creaked it open on this particular Sunday morning.

No hello, no shy smile, no bubbling enthusiasm that pulled him in so much.

But those big, beautiful blue eyes and that distracting golden hair and well, it was still all very new that he was actually _allowed_ to let that affect him, allowed to let it fill him up and consume him without guilt.

He frowned and swallowed. "Okay?" he said, voice unsure, but opening his door as wide as he could to let her in.

She glanced down at his chest and blushed.

He did the same and flushed, too.

He'd studied through the night and slept in, and was only in his black pajama bottoms, because that's just how he slept.

He let her in, and while she roamed around with intense eyes, stroking her fingers over photos frames and along book spines as she investigated, he dove to his dresser, never cursing the one room outlay of his apartment more, and pulled the first black T-shirt that he found awkwardly over his head.

When he pulled the fabric free over his head and pushed it down his forms, he caught her eyes on his middle, on the shrinking sliver between hemline and pants. He flushed and turned. She did the same.

She'd turned back to his shelf, touching the trinkets strewn around it, frowning at a few book titles.

He suddenly remembered the last time she was here - when he babysat Manami and she was helping him. Before he remembered.

But she had, back then. She'd remembered him and the _first_ two times that they'd met for the first time. That day, while _he_ had simply invited over a girl he found intensily fascinating but swallowed down all other feelings for, _she'd_ stood in the apartment of the guy who'd died for her twice, and who didn't remember who she was…

He cleared his throat. "Can I get you anything?" he rasped, insecure and tingling, and already stepped towards the tiled section of his room that was his small, open kitchen.

He opened his fridge before she had a chance to answer and then stood there frowning at it very hard. The contents weren't exactly Usagi-friendly. No sugary treats. He didn't even own cocoa. Nothing. Come to think of, his whole apartment wasn't Usagi-friendly. No manga, no fluffy cushions, no color, nothing she might like to spend her time with.

It was a thought that pulled at his insides.

"Just tea is fine…" she said behind him. He swallowed at the way is sounded so unsure.

They'd talked. The night she'd cleaned the tree, and he'd gotten his memories back, he'd walked her home. They'd talked - about the absolute wrong things - and then they'd kissed, and it had felt like home.

He still felt terribly awkward all the same. What did you say to a girl you loved so hard you died for her twice over, yet really, you'd only ever insulted countless times twice over, too?

He brushed matcha into a small, dark artisan ceramic cup and filled it up with hot water, and set it carefully in front of Usagi at the other side of his counter, then grabbed his own abandoned morning coffee like a lifeline.

The counter stood like an oppressing border between them and it felt all sorts of wrong even if he didn't know how to act about it.

"You wanted to play a game?" He raised his eyes from his cup and his voice was altogether way too nervous.

"Yes," she said, nodding primly. "The 'let's not be so awkward about this' game," she clarified with a wrinkle in her nose that had him swallow.

"Right…" His voice was all sorts of off. "How do you suggest we do that?"

With that, she walked around the counter. He followed her every move, and the way she didn't stop but moved right into his personal space, and he felt his heartbeat behind his eyes and in his fingertips.

Then her hand was on his chest, fisting into the thin fabric of his T shirt, and pulled him down.

This was a suggestion he could live with very, very much.

He exhaled shakily and let himself be pulled down towards her lips so very gladly, putty in her hands. But she lost her courage a breath's width away from his mouth. Her eyes flashed up, wide and nervous, meeting his, and he felt her breath on his lower lip, driving him insane.

He bridged the gap then, finally.

It was far, far, far from their first kiss. But it was new. It sent a thrill through him and he willed down a whimper. The slip of her lip balm on his too dry lips, the softness, the way she breathed so intensely when he brushed his hands against her cheeks to press her to his lips a little more.

He kept his lips on hers as long as he could when they broke apart, kept his eyes closed and leaned his forehead against hers, her cheeks still in his hold, his back at an altogether uncomfortable angle, and let her soft voice wash over him when she spoke.

"Take me on a date?" she asked so near to his lips, and he nodded breathlessly against her forehead, moving her in the process, and she giggled happily and broke away.

When he opened his eyes, slow and content, she was smiling up at him brilliantly.

While he excused himself to go get dressed, she snooped relentlessly through his stuff in a way that amused him greatly. His heart felt a little lighter when he did discover a bit of color in his apartment after all, and picked his pink dress shirt to take her out.

He'd take her to the park. They could rent a little rowing boat. Maybe she'd like that.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Between the R arcs.
> 
> You know, for all your awkward post-reveal, pre-relationship-but-not-reaaaaalllllyyy needs?
> 
> (And, other than I'm depicting here, I do actually think it's much, much more realistic that there was a GAP between R arcs – the Makaiju arc is set in spring, the Black Moon arc is set in late summer and turning into winter. However, I DO like to play with it maybe having just been like, a week. After all, in Episode 60, her parents don't know she has a boyfriend, Mamoru legit asks her questions like 'do you go jogging in the mornings, too?!' and they behave like a freshly baked couple all the way. But, ya know, the 90s anime was never the best at writing the miracle romance in its tentative baby steps, so, who knows what was up with that lol)
> 
> Reviews are love, and I hope you're still enjoying these :)


	28. A Kiss As A Lie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Tuesday guys! Here's another one I already posted on Tumblr a while back. Imagine this one to the sound of rain against a window ;)

* * *

A Kiss As A Lie

* * *

The click of the shutting door was soft, overshadowed by the gentle pitter-patter of the heavy summer rain that beat against his windows and blanketed his apartment in the hazy almost-darkness.

Usagi's ruffled socks thudded even softer against his hardwood floors as she padded before him into his apartment. Her even, too deep breathing, her slightly twitching fingers as she didn't know what to do with her hands, and stopped before the picture window to his balcony… none of it helped the lump in his throat.

There was an open suitcase right by his bed that both of them ignored.

He didn't switch on the lights. It was the middle of the day, even when the heavy rainclouds seemed to want them to pretend it was late evening, and the shadows in his apartment were long and deep, the neon lights of the street reflecting colorfully through his window and off her skin.

He stopped beside her, shoulders slumped. The rain was running down in thick, slow tracks against his window pane.

Only when Usagi's breath came out as a shudder, a pitiful squeak in the back of her throat, did he reach out and take her hand blindly.

It was trembling. He clutched it tight and tighter until it had no room to tremble anymore.

But her shoulders were still shaking, and she brought her other hand to her face, turned away from him so he wouldn't see, and wiped at her face.

Just two weeks ago Chibi-Usa had left them to return to the future. Just three weeks ago Usagi had saved him from Nehelenia's thrall. The wounds on her feet weren't even healed yet.

He was so fucking selfish to do this.

Just three weeks ago, what had broken the spell over him had been Usagi's words. Her compassion. Her soft voice telling the enemy she forgave her, she felt for her, saying that she wouldn't ever have been able to live the lonely life Nehelenia had. She'd spread her arms and allowed Nehelenia to take her revenge, offered her friends to make her life less lonely, because loneliness had been the worst fate Usagi could imagine.

There was nothing worse to Usagi than loneliness. There had been nothing worse for Serenity before her.

And here he was leaving her.

The rain beat relentlessly against his window, dancing its soft play of light and shadow against Usagi's skin, her hair, her silent tears.

Usagi squeezed his hand back in reassurance.

Her voice was almost brittle, way too husky and wet, when she finally spoke.

"It's just one year," she whispered towards the window, not looking up.

He squeezed her hand back.

"Serenity went without being able to see you for pretty much all of her life. I'll be able to do it for a year, too. It'll be easier than I think."

He swallowed. She still didn't look.

"Besides, it's high school. We'll all be so busy with clubs, I won't even have time to miss you."

He nodded. His heart clenched in his chest when she finally turned to face him. Her cheeks were rubbed free of her tears, but he could still see the lingering shine around it, the puffy redness around her eyes.

Why was he doing this again?

Her hand slipped from his and curled into his shirt. Pulling. Her hands were trembling, unheld as they were now. Unsteady.

"We'll be fine," she whispered against his mouth as she pulled him down all the way.

Her lips tasted as salty as her tears, and he sobbed into them, even when he grasped at her hands with both of his to keep them from shaking.

It didn't help, his were shaking even harder.

"We'll be fine," she whispered into his mouth again, shaking and breathy against his tongue in her mouth as she pulled him by his shirt and his hair, down onto the hardwood floor, and held on.

The rain drowned out the sounds of their desperate, gasping, crying attempts to get so close to each other that the trembling might stop.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Between the Stars arcs.
> 
> Also obligatory reminder that Usagi didn't end up in a club in the end but all the girls did, then hung out most her afternoons all alone and writing letters (in like, LIBRARIES! Usagi! Voluntarily!) until Seiya came and cheered her up while the others were so busy.


	29. A Kiss As A Promise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Wednesday, everyone! :D The last kiss and this kiss were written pretty much WEEKS apart, and yet together in this order of the original prompt list, they paint kind of a similar scene in different points of time. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!

* * *

A Kiss As A Promise

* * *

The rain was beating against the window in distracting rhythms and Usagi kept turning in Mamoru's bed.

Sleep was something comforting in her life. One of her bestestest of friends. Always easy. But tonight, sleep wouldn't come.

Here and there the moon slipped between the heavy rain clouds, illuminating her in a way that felt like it sought her out. Mamoru grunted when she shifted again, lifted one sleep-heavy arm, and - in gruff, annoyed and sleepy movements - slapped it across her tummy and drew her close to him and pin her down all at the same time.

His skin was soft and warm and puffy from sleep and a little sticky from the humidity that came with rainy season and a summer night. He grunted again when she turned under his arm and adjusted the thin sheet that covered her fully and him only half. She pressed a kiss to his bopping Adam's apple, burrowing her face in the crook of his neck, and he smacked his lips in his disturbed sleep and grunted again.

"Mamo-chan?" she whispered as low as the pitter-patter of the rain, small and puffy against his throat.

No reaction.

"Mamo-chan?" she tried again. "Are you awake?"

Stupid question. Of course he wasn't. She sighed again and snaked an arm around his warm waist and beneath the hem of the loose tank top he wore to sleep, and along the hem of his small cotton boxer briefs.

Her hands were cooler from the air conditioning and much cooler than his heated skin, and he more or less unconsciously leaned into her touch and sighed.

She trailed her hand further up the inside of his shirt and his arms twitched and drew her just a little closer.

"Hmmmm," he half grunted, half sighed, voice deep and hoarse and scratchy, shifting his cheek against her hair, and she felt the noise rumble through his throat with her ear and mouth pressed against the crook of his neck.

"Mamo-chan?" she tried once more, whispering against his skin.

This time, he moved with a deep inhale, twisting his warm, naked thighs half into the sheets and half against her own legs as he stretched.

"Mhh-hmmm?" he grunted, thick with sleep.

She twisted her fingers into his tank top from the inside, pulling just a little, and moved her head just that little bit out of the crook of his neck and onto the shared pillow, talking to his chin. "Do you ever worry?" she whispered.

He smacked his lips again, breathing deep. Eyes closed, his voice came slow and clumsy and heavy. "'Bout what?" he managed.

She sighed deeply and twisted his shirt a little further, her fist brushing against the sweat-cooled skin just above the small of his back.

"About… about the future?"

She worried her lip and it must have carried in her tone, because his eyes blinked open sleepily and he shifted his cheek on the pillow to look at her drowsily.

He moved his chin down and bopped his nose against hers in sleepy challenge.

"What do you mean?" he rasped. His voice wasn't quite awake, either. His eyes had trouble staying open, drooping heavily even as his hand slipped down to push at her butt to drag her closer.

She let herself get pulled against him fully and slipped her thighs back against his. The thin T shirt of his that she wore as a night shirt had ridden up to her belly, and his hand stroked sleepily up the side of it, palm flat on her skin, stretching out as he stretched again and exhaled deeply.

"I'm…" she started, then frowned, and started again. This was hard to put into words - something that was all feeling. "If it comes the way we saw it and at the same time THAT it comes the way we saw it?"

Yeah, that made no sense to anyone not in her head.

"The future, I mean."

But his eyes blinked open, now more awake, and he shifted onto his elbow, throwing her a frown of his own.

She scrunched up her nose, shook her head, and pushed at his elbow. "This is stupid. Go back to sleep."

His frown deepened, hair falling insistently into his eyes. "Usa…"

Her lips fell into a pout and she exhaled through her nose.

When he lowered his elbow back onto the pillow and pillowed his cheek against it, but didn't close his eyes and didn't erase the frown from them, she sighed and tried to put it into words again. A little better this time, maybe.

She untangled her hand from the back of his shirt and smoothed it against his side, only a shadow visible that moved the fabric from inside his tank top. He ignored it completely, heavy-lidded eyes fixed on her in expectation.

Her thumb found the small raised birthmark on his side blindly and stroked up and down across it.

"You wouldn't even give me cactus-duty when you were on your summer job last month, Mamo-chan," she finally spoke, low and carefully. "You went out of your way to get all your plants to Mako-chan, down to the cactus, even though I have a key."

She didn't say it in an accusing tone. More matter of fact. And it seemed to confuse him. His brow creased into the small bundle of wrinkled skin that pooled between his eyebrows, but he didn't say anything.

"I can't even keep plants alive," she breathed dejectedly. "I'm gonna be the worst queen the world could ask for."

His frown deepened, turning into a silent stare that was almost unnerving if it weren't for the soft strokes along the side of her belly.

She swallowed, alternating between his eyes, meeting his stare.

She blinked, almost startled, when he finally spoke, and she realised the rain had slowed. It thrummed a little calmer now.

His eyes were fully awake now, his hand lifting to cradle her cheek. "You'll be the best queen this world could wish for, Usako."

She scoffed.

"I mean it," he said with a deep frown.

It was her turn to frown back, and he pursed his lips and moved his thumb to try and smooth out the frowny lines across her forehead. It was a lost cause, but he persevered.

"You're exactly what the world needs," he whispered. "Inspiring, loving compassion and humble gentleness where currently there's power-hungry greed and cold-hearted, ruthless 'interests'. You love the world and the people and want to protect every last person in it."

Her brow puckered under his gentle strokes. "But…" she started to argue.

He interrupted her.

"I sometimes worry if it's too much to ask of you, though."

She blinked hard once and stared at him hard in surprise, her face moving slightly on the pillow.

He sighed, tilted his head slightly, eyes on his moving thumb and the lines on her forehead. "I wonder if the world deserves you. I'm terrified it will exploit you. Tear you down."

Her mouth popped open. "Mamo-chan…" she breathed, taken aback.

He pressed his lips to her frowny lines, to the ridged brow and the crumpled, tense bit of skin between her eyebrows, and pressed the softest kiss to it, and then another and another.

His lips were soft and gentle, and his hand in the back of her neck was not; it was hard and insistent and pressing into her tense neck.

It finally did the trick to smooth all the worry lines away and let them untense for a bit.

Another kiss, and another, all to the same spot above the bridge of her nose where the tension and the worry sat.

"I'll try my best to protect you all the way, Usako," he whispered, his lips remaining on that spot. "I promise."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Post-Stars


	30. Comforting Kisses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand happy Thursday guys! Only 20 more to go! Also, I all hope you're all strong on your R game because this is set in a specific episode, I'm not making this up. We got a moment of them in the rain and then they dashed off together looking for Chibs. This is me filling in the gaps.

* * *

Comforting Kisses

* * *

By now, the worry was a living, breathing, biting, acidic thing in her gut. Something primal that she couldn't put her finger on that made her skin flare and her breath come out strangled.

Everything else was starting to fall away.

The bright neon colors the rain reflected off of every surface around her. The splash of her rainboots as they dashed through the streets. The rumble of thunder she was usually afraid of and was now blending out by sheer adrenaline. The flap of Mamoru's umbrella as it fought against the wind in front of her. The warm feelings in her gut that had formed after she'd run into his chest and he had indulged her a second longer only to be crushed when he reminded her of the rejection with a simple step back that left her to get drenched in the rain.

The heartbreak that coiled in her whenever she saw him, a reminder of what she'd lost and would never get back because her Prince did not want her in this life.

It all blended away.

It was something visceral. Something screaming in her blood to find this strange child and protect her.

A child alone and scared in a thunderstorm was one thing. This child, triggered by fear, hunted by the enemy?

She had to find her. If her life depended on it. It was screaming in her veins and she didn't know why.

The way Mamoru ran he must have felt it too.

There was no one Usagi trusted more than him at the moment and it was the strangest sensation.

He had pushed her from his arms to be drenched by the rain and yet, when she'd told him what was wrong, he didn't leave. And after half an hour of panicked searching, when she gripped his hand in anxiety, he was gripping back, knuckles white.

Her throat felt raw from yelling Chibiusa's name. Mamoru had kept more of a level head, informing the policewoman in her little cabin on the side of the street, describing pink hair and little yellow rainboots while Usagi paced the pedestrian bridge overhead for a vantage point.

One hour later and they were no longer running, instead strategically searching every spot in Juuban they could think of that Chibiusa so much as knew, their eyes meeting in panic when she wasn't there.

One and a half hours later and she hadn't even realised he'd never let go of her hand anymore. Had sought it out himself whenever she'd been the one to let go.

She slowed to a stop on the next pedestrian bridge when a sob tore through her throat. It had been almost two hours. What if they'd got her? What if she…

She dimly registered that her legs were wet and realised she'd fallen to her knees into the puddles and the metal of the bridge, and her hair that was already matted against her in wet, pathetic strands was pooling on the wet ground, but she didn't care, she just let the sobs wreck through her.

The thing she noticed first was that the rain stopped hitting her from the front.

His umbrella lay discarded and open beside them and the rain hit him straight on when he lowered himself in front of her.

His knees locked around her and her green raincoat, and his chest smelled of rain and warmth as he crushed her to him. She sobbed with her mouth open and her snot against the pink fabric of his shirt. He tried to shush her, and the world got a little more silent as he shielded her off from the rain and took it all instead.

Thunder rumbled above them. A heartbeat later and the sky was illuminated in a flash of white.

She was calming down to the press of his lips against her temple, her wet hair, her forehead. She wasn't quite sure if he was aware he was doing it, but then he was brushing away the wet, matted hair of her fringe and kissing the damp skin underneath and he _must_ have been.

She curled wet fingers into his damp shirt and held her breath.

"We'll find her. I promise," he croaked with his lips against the shell of her ear and his arms around her in an iron grip.

Then the sky illuminated once more, and it was not the lightning.

Usagi gasped and ripped away from his arms. Chibiusa's spike of energy!

He grabbed her hand and they were flying down the metal stairs and towards it, his umbrella lying upside down and pooling with water, left behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: R. Specifically, Episode 64.


	31. A Kiss After A Small Rejection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Friday! I'm sending you into the weekend with a new kiss! For this one, I took a canon moment that I half hate and half ADORE and fixed it and put a kiss in it. SO THERE.

* * *

A Kiss After A Small Rejection

* * *

The world was unfair and out to get her and her head hurt from Rei's skull and why the hell was this always happening to her this was unfair.

Shouldn't the universe cut her some slack? Even when she didn't have _any _intention to _ever _set foot in a cram school (as _if_) - _if_, for whatever weird reason, she were so inclined to do so after all, she wouldn't even have time for it. Besides, she'd had to use the Silver Crystal the other day to save the world from Evil Space Aliens From The Future along with her future, unevil-sized daughter and had slept for three days afterwards and really these test results were utterly unfair.

She sat, shoulders slumped, on the concrete stairs leading up to the edge of the park from the main street and pouted at her indeedly very poor test results.

"I can already hear what Mamo-chan would say if he saw this," she sighed down at the paper.

"That's really terrible," his voice would say. Definitely.

She nodded sadly. "That's what he'd say, alright."

And then it clicked, and she found his eyes in shocked panic as he gave her _that_ look over her shoulder, and she shrieked and jumped and hugged the wall opposite of him very, very tightly and comically stupid.

He clicked his tongue. _That _look looked really, really annoyed, she had to say. And she laughed the most godawful laugh in all of the history of fake laughs and said something about the weather.

"Usako…" he glowered.

She flinched, ducking, slipped into that same consoling and terrified voice she used with her Mama all the time when it came to her grades. "I'm… The girls and I are gonna sit down and buckle up and study now. In fact, we're going to have a study session at Rei's later."

_Don't take away my free time privileges_, that tone said. _I know you think I'm lazy, but I already have so little of it_, it said.

"You should've been doing that all along," he pointed out. "Maybe we shouldn't date for a while. Until you catch up on schoolwork."

She froze, dumbstruck, horrified. _Oh shit._ Right. Entirely _different _sets of rights and privileges at stake _here…_

_Oh no. Please. That's my _emotional support snuggles_ you're taking away. _Again_._

She was rendered to a helpless, fumbling, begging stutter, then clicked her mouth shut. "That's extreme," she squeaked out. "I... I don't think we have to do that…"

He sighed, his pretty features dissolving into regret, as if _he _was losing something, and she not, like, _everything_. Then he picked up her schoolbag that she hadn't even noticed having flung about the place and pressed it into her dumbstruck hands.

"You should study hard…" he said with a regretful, sad little smile, and turned to leave.

A moment passed in which her heart pounded wildly, shocked. "WAIT!" she yelped out, and he stopped.

He turned around but didn't walk back, just shot her a questioning glance.

She knew it was stupid. She knew he didn't mean it like that… hopefully… _probably_... but… that's how it had happened, right? Right _here_. At the concrete wall bordering the side of the park, behind these steps. Where she'd walked into him with a bad test grade in her hand and saw him collapsed against the side of the wall, glomped him without reading the situation right and got… got left.

The reminder flashed through her and paralyzed her and shot into her eyes. She hadn't believed him that time, went back to his apartment in hopes she'd misunderstood. _Surely_, this wasn't happening _again…_?

"Are you…" she gasped out, tears springing to her eyes "Just like this? 'We shouldn't date'?!"

His eyes moved into alarm and he took one wary step back.

She felt her lip quivering. "Are you breaking up with me again? Over THIS? Over school?" And then the first tear fell.

He was at her side in a flash, his hands on her cheeks and catching her tears and he looked absolutely _horrified_. He shook his head wildly, "Usako, no! That's not what I—"

"Because, you know, we saved the world and all," she sniffled, but her eyes dried again under his concerned look, and it was ok, really, he was here, he looked alarmed, she knew this wasn't… but. "Last week. I'm not good at school even when I have time for it, and I…"

Her tone turned petulant, angry.

He shook his head again firmly, but this time his eyes were tender, careful, and his thumb stroked across her cheek. "I _promise _it's not what I mean. You just obviously need the time to study, Usako…"

But it seemed her angry pout soothed his nerves, and the alarm flew from him, too.

She pouted at him. "We saved the world and the Crystal sucked me dry and even before that we were _time traveling _and stuck in a_ time storm_ and there was Black Lady and Diamond and it was emotionally exhausting! This test asked stuff that felt like I'd heard it months ago and no wonder it sucked," she defended herself, and might even have stomped her foot.

One of his hands lowered even when the other remained stroking her cheek, and he didn't move a bit away. Yet, he was the most aggravating person in existence because after all that he still had the gall to say what he said next. "I take it Ami got full score despite all this?"

She glared. About to point out that Ami hadn't used the Silver Crystal, and also visited fancy cram schools, but she guessed none of this was going to help her in her cause. "Ami is secretly a cyborg. Only explanation," she grumbled. "Or, ya know, Senshi of _wisdom _and all. I'm not."

He huffed at her. "Or more like you hung out at my place the last few nights while she was studying."

She glared.

"I would have sent you to study with the girls if I'd known you had a test coming up, Usako."

She pouted. "I could study at your place," she groused.

He cracked a smile, rolled his eyes ever so softly. "We both know that doesn't work."

Her pout only grew. "_Fiiiiine_," she said, all the shoulders she had to her convenience falling in defeat.

But he leaned in and pressed soft, soft, slackened lips to her in the slowest, most tender peck of a kiss he'd ever given her. And she kinda had to melt against it with a sigh.

"I promise it's not what I meant. I would never break up with you. It's _never _been what I meant, ok?" he whispered against her lips, stooped over, his thumb back to stroking her cheek.

She nodded, "Ok," she whispered back heavily.

"I just don't want to distract you. School is very important, Usako."

She scowled abruptly.

He smiled, pressed another soft, innocent, impossibly _sweet _kiss to her lips and then, once again, pressed her bag into her hands.

She nodded when he turned to leave again, and she sighed.

"And hey," she called after him. "Maybe next time you begin a sentence basically with 'Maybe we shouldn't see each other anymore'..."

He threw her a look, one that clearly screamed, 'that's _not _what I said', in full irritation.

"...maybe don't do it in the exact same place you did this to me before?" she ended with a pout.

His eyes widened comically wide as he looked around. Obviously, so, so _obviously_, he suddenly realised what exactly she was pointing about.

He was back with her in a blink, and this time the hands on her cheeks were more insistent, shaking her a little, and the quick kisses he pressed to her lips weren't soft at all, they were hard and insistent and a little worked up. But she puckered her lips, and received every single one gladly.

"I promise," he breathed against her lips between kisses, in a way that meant 'I'm sorry,' and even when she nodded, he kept going. Kiss after kiss after kiss.

He didn't leave after that. He walked her to Hikawa and the girls and their study group, and stayed to explain what he could.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: S. Specifically, Episode 90, the first episode of S.
> 
> There. I love the original scene for its humor, but the obvious simile to a different scene in that exact same spot and the placement of this scene DIRECTLY after the break up arc, never reaaaally sat right with me, so there. (And yeah, obviously I hope it WASN'T a week between R and S, I hope it was a whole summer or something or even longer, and most probably it WAS, I like to think they had gaps between seasons in general, but, ya know, EMOTIONAL CONTINUITY – this girl was affected by the break up arc in STARS still, so even if there was a gap between seasons, this would have reminded her of the break up arc, so yeah – that scene's a little in poor taste in a lot of ways even if it was hella funny…?)


	32. A Kiss To Wake Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Monday, guys! This is a new kiss, from a VERY canon moment and dynamic. Maybe the most canon thing I ever wrote. Still, it's one that's a bit more experimental. So, here, enjoy! :D

* * *

Everyone knows how that story goes. The Prince comes to rescue the defenseless princess, defeating the big bad evil that trapped her in her tower or her glass coffin or a castle made of thorns. With a kiss the spell is broken, and she finally wakes up.

His was never that story, and he loved her for it.

Throughout the years, he'd often had to explain.

Why did you take her name? He doesn't remember any women in his life being asked that question, but his was an easy answer. Because he wanted to. Protector of the Moon; he got her back, he stood behind her, this most extraordinary, strongest person in the universe.

He'd often had to defend himself, too, over the years.

Countless media articles, segments, interviews, memes, features on him that called Tuxedo Mask useless, weak, eye-candy, good for nothing.

_What's he good for? Does he even _have _any powers? 'My job here is done - but you didn't do anything!'_

It seemed when it was a man and not a woman, suddenly half the world had a very different view of the importance of the supporting character - the one to create the distractions, provide the healing and support, the one who's not strong enough to deal the finishing blows but stands by so that the person who can, gets to do just that.

He had never had that problem. As far as he was concerned, he knew that the biggest contribution he could provide in a battle was to make sure that the love of his life got there in time and knew what to hit.

He was proud of that. Proud of her.

And if he could make sure she didn't get hurt in the process, he considered his role a full success. That was, after all, the hardest part about standing back and letting those more equipped to deal do her thing: He had to watch when things got tough. Could do nothing but clutch her shoulders and provide support while she was pouring all her energy into a crystal that liked to kill her from time to time, liked to rip her away straight from under his hands.

That stupid saying… Behind every strong man…

Over the years and growing up he had been made to believe that this sentence was made to infer that the woman is equally important however the power is divided. Yet, clearly, it seemed they didn't ever actually believe that if it's one so hard to swallow when it's 'behind a strong woman' for a change.

Mamoru was the man behind the strongest woman. One he would die for in a moment's notice. Has died for multiple times and never regretted a thing about it except her tears.

It had been hard for him, sometimes. Day to day. Seeing people treat her civilian self as something less. Treating him like a wuzz because he treated her like a queen and not a princess.

Until suddenly she was, and they all started to understand.

Yes, everyone knows how the story goes. The prince comes to rescue the princess, defeating the big bad evil that trapped her in her tower or her glass coffin or a castle made of thorns. With a kiss the spell is broken, and she finally wakes up.

His will never be that story.

This was the story where the princess wasn't defenseless. It was a story where instead the princess was the defender of all, so the big bad had no more defenseless princesses to claim again forever more. Where she defeats all the bad guys on her own, one after the other after the next, standing proud and tall, sometimes absolutely alone with nothing but her heart left to do the job. It's a story where the princess finally becomes a queen. A queen who saves the whole world a dozen times over with her compassion and her empathy for others and it turned out to be the strongest fist of all.

And even when cursed eternal sleep came to claim her, came to put her in a coffin made from crystal - it was she - herself, the young princess - who got the job done with the help of other girls.

And then she got up, because she got this. And turned around to break the spell on her own and kiss her husband awake. Kiss him awake.

His eyes fluttered open, the pressure of her lips soft and gentle and familiar and forever, and she offered her hand so he may get up.

Because she was the hero of his story, and he couldn't love her more for it.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: R (Crystal Tokyo).
> 
> (Also, reminding you again that if Chibs says her name is Usagi Tsukino, as she did in her R introduction, one very on the nose explanation for that would be that her last name might actually be Tsukino? If you wanna fight me on this, go read my Little Moment 'Rootless' and then we'll talk lol)


	33. A Forced Kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Tuesday guys! And thank you to everyone who blew me away yesterday with all that ENCOURAGEMENT yesterday? I'm feeling overwhelmed with all that love and to know there's actually many of you enjoying these? So, I hope you enjoy this one, too! This is a shorter one, but it's a new one!

* * *

A Forced Kiss

* * *

Serenity was standing right there. Just outside of the corner of his eye. Queued up with her Senshi as if she was just another guest, as if she didn't deserve to sit up front instead, to take his throne and sit elevated above all of them and even him. As if she wasn't more important than any person in this room, himself included. As if she didn't own his soul. As if his place wasn't by her side, one step behind her, wherever she went.

As if she wasn't his wife. His queen. His world.

But no one could know. If anyone knew it meant their heads.

He wasn't even to greet her. He wasn't even to look at her.

It had never been harder to do than today, at this banquet, at this respectless charade of a political statement he wanted no part of, was just a pawn in.

But perhaps that was a lie. Perhaps it was this difficult every single second that he had to breathe living this lie.

It painted a constant snarl on his lips, venom in his eyes, and people shrunk under his intense, furious expression as he greeted THEM even when he would not greet HER, and what even was the point of all of this if he couldn't be with her even when she was here, when he lay awake at night all nights and wished of nothing else but her proximity.

He could feel her movements behind his back. Pulling at him. Screaming at him. His every fibre tempting him, seducing him into stupidity and recklessness. Screaming at him to turn and to look and to stop pretending.

Screaming at him to turn and to run and to take her hand and rip off every last piece of ceremonial, royal garbage off both of them and leave it all behind.

Screaming at him to at least just _walk_ to her and say hello. See her eyes. Or even just to stand next to her and say nothing and if the impossible were possible, no one might look and he might dare to reach out his hand and brush the back of his against the back of hers.

Instead he forced his lips to yet another female hand that wasn't hers in greeting, kissing with chapped lips that were tightly pressed together so he wouldn't scream.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Silver Millennium


	34. A Kiss To Pretend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Wednesday, guys! This is an older one again that the tumblr crowd might still remember, but ya know, one of my most favorite settings to write in ;) So here, have some angst for your coffee break!

* * *

A Kiss To Pretend

* * *

Breaking up with her was the hardest thing he'd ever done.

And he had a few things to compare it to. Like raising his sword to his most trusted men with no thought spared for them, knowing he would fall at their will, just for the sliver of a chance that Serenity might survive the genocide of her people by the hands of those he trusted. Like jumping in front of a girl he teased every day and who had just flopped his world upside down by transforming into the most powerful person he knew in front of his eyes, and letting himself get impaled in her stead. Like stepping in front of that same girl with no memories to call back on whatsoever and let a duo of violent aliens try to rip him apart so they might not do so with her.

These had all been easy decisions. The easiest in his life. Almost automatic. His most basic truths.

Because in the end, it was who he was. It didn't even make sense, and it was the only thing in his world that made sense at the same time. In any world, in any time, he would find her and he would be drawn to her and he would love her, even when he didn't know to name these feelings yet. Always, everywhere, he would love her in this overwhelming, crushing, nonsensical way that boiled in him and that he couldn't put into words. He would be pulled like a magnet, like a moth, like a drowning, falling, lovesick fool to her smile and her exasperating nonsense and her naïve and wise good heart, and the way she could share that smile so easily and make it so contagious. In a way, he thought he was made to love her. He was made to protect her. It thrummed through his veins and gave him his powers, he was sure of it. He would die loving her. And when he did, and when he has, she would know he loved her in this all-consuming way.

Sacrificing himself was easy as long as she got the message.

Sacrificing himself, his happiness, the happy ending this second (third!) chance and rebirth was supposed to represent? He'd take a thousand deaths for her if it meant he could keep her safe again while she just knew this eternal truth. That he loved her. Would always love her.

"I don't love you anymore," he'd said through gritted teeth, for what felt like the hundredth painful time, a rose crumbling in his clenched fist, staining his white gloves.

"But…" Her hands had been trembling, tightly clasped in front of her chest.

_But you came to save me, but you're here, but you kissed me awake to break the youma's spell, but you're taking care of this kid that should be my responsibility, but you always come when I'm in trouble…_

Whatever the excuse, her eyes shone with hope… But not always, and the times they didn't broke him. Yet mostly, she was stubborn.

It made him feel rotten, despicable, that the hardest thing about this sacrifice was not the sacrifice itself, but the fact she would maybe never know it was a sacrifice in the first place. That he loved her. That it was a lie to protect her.

It was ironic then, that it was even harder when she knew. When she'd had the same dream and she knew, and she pounded her fists on his door to get him to take her back because she didn't care if she died as long as she could be with him.

It shredded him at the same time as it grounded him. She knew. She _knew_.

The kiss that night under the moonlight was supposed to be an exception. A moment of weakness they allowed themselves. Nothing had changed. She was still in danger; the prophetic dreams were still there.

But now it was the fifth night in a row after that "exception" that he sat in the dark of his apartment and waited.

He left his balcony door open.

It was past 11pm - the time the Tsukino household grew quiet enough to let her escape easily - when he heard the thud of her feet on his balcony, saw the pink flash of light in his peripheral vision, and even when he lay on his side facing away from her, he lifted the covers, felt her arms snake around his middle, felt her slip underneath the blanket and curve herself around his form, pink flannel pajamas pressed against his back, his legs, her cheek against the hollow between his shoulder blades.

He exhaled shakily, the lump in his throat so thick and painful, but wrapped his hand around her smaller one clutching at the muscles of his stomach, unfurled her fingers from their desperate grip, and brought them up to his face.

He kissed her knuckles first, between every gap, pressing his warm lips to her cold skin in an insistent, but carefully soft way, then uncurled each finger, one by one, to press his lips against the pads, soft and slow and reverent, his stomach dropping and his chest full and hurting.

Her felt her shaking behind him.

When he turned, he found her eyes, sad but calm. Sharing the same pillow, her cheek rested softly on the fluffed fabric just a breath away from his own, and he didn't let go of her hand, instead he clasped it between both of his and held it against his chest.

They didn't speak. They mostly didn't, these nights. There was nothing left to say that wouldn't break their hearts or make this harder than it already was.

They couldn't be together. And yet here they were.

It was wrong, it was dangerous, but she knew.

When he leaned in, sliding forward on the pillow with the crinkling sound of the fabric against his ear, brushing his nose against hers and then capturing her soft lips between his in a slow, caressing kiss, over and over, her lips slipping against his in this warm, shallow and soft and grounding way, he could pretend. He could pretend it would all be ok, that he wasn't killing her.

Because he could never let her go. He'd never had been able to, not once, not really, not in the end. This was one sacrifice too hard.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: R (break up arc)


	35. A Kiss To Gain Something

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thanksgiving, guys! It's not something that is celebrated in my parts of the world, however, I'm feeling very thankful for our little Usamamo fandom corner, and all the love and support you blew my way the other day and in general, and hope to give a bit of that love back to you!
> 
> Anyway, today's a new kiss :) Have fun with it!

* * *

A Kiss To Gain Something

* * *

"I need you."

She hadn't even said hello. Just barged into his apartment like she'd barged into his life and stopped in front of him with a determined pull to her lips.

He settled his book down onto the couch next to him and tried to bite back a blooming half-smile but helplessly failed. "Ok...?" he said, looking up at her with the half-smile fully in place, one eyebrow raised.

She rolled her eyes with a huff. "Not like that."

"Right." The half smile turned into a smirk.

He leant back into the cushions a little, eyes fixed steadily on her in that way he knew affected her, crossing his legs slowly, and he silently revelled in the fact that it caused a blush to form on her cheeks, even if her expression never wavered.

She nodded curtly and continued on as if he hadn't just come on to her. "Specifically, I need Mamoru-baka. Ya know, Troll-Mamoru."

He raised both eyebrows, this time.

With an abrupt plop, she landed on the couch beside him, squishing his book, and grabbed his hands. "Please," she begged, tone intense. "I need your help."

He threw her a look. "And who exactly do you plan to flirt with, Usako?"

Her mouth fell open and her cheeks blew up and he immediately realised his mistake.

"HA, SO YOU ADMIT YOU WERE FLIRTING!"

He quirked one side of his lips up but didn't reply.

Her eyes turned into a glare.

"'Troll' Mamoru?" he quipped instead.

"An apt description."

His smirk only grew, and he shifted his shoulder closer, tilting his head towards her. "If you say so."

"Of the guy who I need," she continued.

His smirk was on full force now. "You've been saying that, yes."

She pursed her lips but leaned her face closer, too. "Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. He's in this room right now."

He shifted closer, pulled at her. "Is he now?" he purred, his voice all tease, and he was all sorts in her personal space by now with wide mischievous eyes and that full smirk stretching his lips, nodding at her slowly only a breath away.

She huffed.

He lifted his chin a little, licked his lips and focused on hers. "And what DO you need my services for, Odango Atama?" he breathed at her.

It felt like all sorts of triumph when her lip quivered ever so slightly under his close attention.

But then she sighed, deep and annoyed.

"God, you're distracting," she whined.

He grinned at her, toothy and wide, wriggling his eyebrows just once, just barely, as he pulled at her arms, leant back, and sighed contentedly when she plopped into his lap with that delicious pout, crossing her arms behind his neck.

"...there's a chance you're not gonna help me if I tell you," she admitted with half an almost accusing glare.

He shifted her in his lap, hands on her hips and thumbs stroking slowly, and craned his neck to better look up at her with a slow quirk to his brow. "Please don't use my flirting technique to prank your brother, Usako."

She crinkled her nose cutely. "Ew, no."

He chuckled, but then Usagi went for the kill.

Slipping her hands back down to his chest, she rubbed her palms slowly up and down his shirt, rubbing herself fully up against him and batting her eyelashes. "Will you help me?" she cooed at him, then rubbed her nose against his ever so softly.

"Hmmm," he sighed, and helplessly gave in when her lips slowly puckered and ever so briefly brushed them against his, soft and sensuous, her lip balm slipping smoothly between them.

It was a good kiss. A great kiss. He wanted more.

A moan that was a sigh that was a moan, he lifted his shoulders off the couch, stretching, arching up to fall closer against her. His hands at her hips starting to grip and pull tighter, and she giggled prettily into his mouth, even when her hands found his cheeks and she kissed him deeper, tongue stroking into his mouth.

But she withdrew it much too soon, releasing him with a light, teasing suck at his lower-lip, and it was his turn to whine when she opened her eyes back up and twinkled expectantly at him.

She really wasn't fighting fair.

"Do I get more of these if I agree?" he sighed happily.

She smiled so prettily, puckered her lips again to drop the softest peck of a kiss with her feather-lips onto his, and then another, and another.

He sighed in defeat. "I'm going to regret this immediately, aren't I?"

Her smile immediately turned into the sun, victory stretching all across her face, and she jumped off his lap with a whoosh, pulling at his hands to drag him with her.

He blinked, let himself get pulled, because what else would he do but surrender blindly. "Uh... where…"

She shrugged, smiled that sweet smile at him. "Out to help me," she said, and chucked his shoes at him in the genkan.

He curled his hands in hers and shrugged and followed, because of course he would.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Ummm.. not very obvious this time? Post-Stars I guess? But really like, whenever?
> 
> Hope you liked it!


	36. A Kiss To Give Up Control

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Friday, guys! Today's kiss is a short one, again, but it's new! Hope you have a good weekend!

* * *

A Kiss To Give Up Control

* * *

Tuxedo Mask had no idea when it was that he'd surrendered.

The pull to her was older than his memories of even being this masked vigilante. Yet he knew deep in his gut that was what triggered it - she transformed, and so did he.

She'd scream and he'd run, she'd fall and he'd catch, she'd fight and he'd try and hold the target clear for her. She was a thousand times more powerful and yet he would jump in front of her and he had no idea _why_.

There was a time he tried to fight it. Where he resented it, this thrall she had on him. When he wanted to be free of it, just as he'd wanted to be free of the dreams of a faceless princess that had haunted him for so long. When he didn't understand it, yet.

He'd tried to keep away once. He'd felt the splitting headache that triggered his transformation and he'd clawed his hands into the window frame, trying not to go.

There was still a dent today where the wood had splintered.

Yes, in the beginning, he'd cursed it. Cursed her, just a little. What was it about this magical girl that had him so magically enslaved to her?

It was way, way later that he finally understood.

And really, he'd been kind of an idiot to not have caught on sooner.

The pull was still there even when his teeth dragged across her skin, even when his hips pushed against hers, even when his hands were full of _her_. There was nothing he could do to make it stop, he needed more.

And so did she, judged by the breathless siren call he could pull from her lips that felt like it burned through his veins and echoed from his soul.

"_More_," she cried against his ear, her hands digging into his hair, his hand digging into her hip, his mask digging into his cheek and against her throat as he bit and sucked and marked her like she was something he could keep and claim and make his.

He pressed against her and she pressed back and there was nothing left that he could do, he'd given up control so long ago.

And so he sucked harder, bit deeper, slipped his tongue up her throat, along her jaw, into her mouth and tried to drown.

He'd surrendered long, long ago, to this pull that came from her and that had chained his heart and he didn't even care anymore.

She would shout and he would come running, she would scream and he would feel like dying, she would sigh and he would gasp into her mouth and she would kiss and he would surrender. Always.

Somehow, he felt like he'd done it before.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Classic (Pre-Reveal)
> 
> (Yes, a bit less canon than usual, but I will always, always, always want them to have more chemistry in Classic.)
> 
> Also, I'll start posting a new multi-chaptered story today, if you want to check it out! If not, have a wonderful weekend either way, and see you on Monday with the next kiss!


	37. A Kiss Without A Motive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand happy Monday, everyone! Only three more weeks until all 50 are out now! Hope you're still enjoying them! Here's a new one again!

* * *

A Kiss Without A Motive

* * *

Mamoru cracked his neck, popping a joint, and stretched his arms over his head with a deep sigh, hitting save on the progress in his document. Just the discussion to go and his assignment would be ready to submit.

His back was screaming at him for the way he'd sat crouched at his coffee table all morning for this, and he leant back against the couch and groaned.

Usagi chuckled at him and he cracked an eye back open to glare at her.

She was hopping around the kitchen "preparing lunch" - meaning she'd left her Nintendo Switch on the couch behind him and put the kettle on to pour hot water into two maxi styrofoam instant ramen bowls, and rummaged in his drawer for chopsticks, humming along to his tinny kitchen radio.

The song changed when she opened up his fridge.

He froze with the first, dramatic, distinctly recognizable climb of notes.

_Search for your love..._

He hated the way he turned and watched, how his heart jumped a little at the way her whole body broke into a soft smile and she held her heart, absentmindedly staring into the fridge but not seeing its contents anymore.

Her movements were slower as she withdrew the two bottled milk teas and set them on the counter, and by the time the kettle popped and she ripped off the foil of the ramen bowls to pour, she was swaying her hips, mouth opening almost involuntarily to sing along to the first verse.

_You are always shining._

_Your smile is just like a tiny star._

He knew not to be jealous. And he also knew, logically, that this song wasn't about her. It had been written before Seiya even met Usagi. And still...

He hated the clench of his jaw, the way he found himself on his feet and in the kitchen without a conscious thought, how his stomach coiled when she didn't even react, lost in the song and her memories and her head with that too soft smile on her lips as she slowly, sunkenly dragged her chopsticks through one of the bowls.

_Where are you now, Moonlight Princess?_

_My princess..._

She startled a little, as if he'd pulled her back from somewhere far away, when he invaded her space and with one finger, softly lifted her chin.

Her smile was still soft, a little questioning, when he leaned in and dropped his lips to hers.

She sighed happily, squeaked a little in surprise and probably the uncalled for level of slight pressure, the slightly desperate worship he put into the kiss.

He kissed her like someone who had something to prove, and maybe to lose. With both his hands on her face, one tangling into her hair, an open mouth and open heart and tongue stroking into her mouth as if to claim his territory.

Her lips were pink and wet when he released her, one hand still at her head, her eyes that mix of amused and charmed and confused when she settled back onto the heels of her bare feet and looked back up with questioning eyes.

She tilted her head and it shifted his hold. "What was that for?" she asked with a twinkle in her eyes.

He sighed, stroked his fingers through her silky hair along one long, precious streamer of gold that he was fortunate enough to be allowed to touch whenever he wanted. Him. Not Seiya.

"No reason," he mumbled, his eyes on his fingers in her hair.

_Answer for me..._

She lifted both eyebrows and he shrugged.

He felt the way his cheeks flushed, and probably his neck and the tips of his ears too, the way heat crawled up his body and made him feel embarrassed. But if she saw, she made no comment.

"Do I have to have a motive?" he mumbled awkwardly.

She tilted her head again, smiled up at him, and curled her nose cutely as she let him off the hook, and leaned up to drop another peck onto his lips.

"If you say so," she said with a smile, and he nodded curtly, grabbed the two hot bowls to carry back to his coffee table, and sighed a too relieved sigh when the song ended and another was announced.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Post-Stars
> 
> I know that Viz has a shiny new translation for that song, but I haven't seen that, so I'm using the translation of the original lyrics. Anyway, here's for your Stars related Usamamo dealing fic needs!


	38. A Kiss Because Time Is Running Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Tuesday guys! This was one of those kisses that I specifically wrote for a very silmil-loving friend ;)

* * *

A Kiss Because Time Is Running Out

* * *

He kicked the heavy door shut with a roar, anger a palpable, ugly thing in his veins.

He'd never been so angry. It lay like a cloud on his mind and tinted his world in solid rage. The urge to break something, to scream, to run away… it wasn't a new feeling. It was a welcoming venom that crooked its finger and tempted him into the darkest, familiar corners of his mind.

The frame rattled dangerously, the gold hinges groaning and shuddering, and he felt ashamed for a brief moment.

Someone in his chambers had shrieked and jumped and he whirled around, heavy brocade cape barely moving with him. He fully expected a startled chambermaid at this time of day, replacing his sheets and cleaning the floors. Instead, his anger was lifted from his chest, lifting the cloud and clearing his mind for a tunnel of light.

She was wearing a thin cape and hood, inconspicious and simple, the same she'd worn when they'd first met, so many, many moons ago. And when she lifted her startled gaze, he saw her forehead covered in powders and creams, hiding her.

His jaw snapped shut, resettling into his angry scowl and hardened face, and in three broad strokes he was across the room and his thumbs were angrily wiping at the heavy make-up covering her forehead without so much of an utter of a greeting.

She didn't know him like this. He didn't know himself like this. This snarling animal in his chest was new and ugly and so unlike the gentle calm she loved him for, and he hated himself in this moment almost as much as he hated everything but her in this moment.

Her eyes were wide, and she hushed soft protests at him. And while he cradled her face softly, his frown set deeper and deeper with every harsh stroke of his fingers to set her royal insignia free from its camouflage.

He was so frustrated that it wouldn't come free easily that with a snarl he pressed his lips to it and ran his tongue flat and harsh across the skin.

It would have been a laugh that escaped her lips, if it hadn't burst forth from her in a cry, spilling sudden tears that caught on his cheeks and chin.

He rubbed again, using the expensive fabric of his gold-embroidered tunic and probably ruining it forever, and the crescent moon on her forehead was finally free.

When he pressed his lips to it again, it was hot and pulsating, a tingling glimmer beneath his lips, a calming force.

She'd once confessed - in a hush, hidden under his covers and the deepest night, her creamy thighs pressed around his, his hands buried in her soft flesh - that it tickled when he kissed it, but never unpleasantly so.

He didn't move his lips away but sighed and closed his eyes and moved his hands out of her soft hair to cradle her whole form in a hard crush against his frame.

She collapsed against him, hands against his chest, surrendering all her weight to him as she fell against him and let him hold her.

The grief radiated through her in crushing shudders.

"You've heard," he whispered. "How could you have already heard?"

They'd just told him minutes ago.

Her hand curled against his chest.

"They've decided long before you knew," Serenity whispered back. Her hand was shaky. "It was announced in a formal ceremony last night. Along with a strong reprimand that the Moon was not to send a suitor for your hand."

Like a snake writhing, the anger pushed hot and hard and slow through every limb of his, again, hot and hard and coiling.

"We've long known we were running out of time," she whispered into the velvet and he once again felt the need to rip it all off of him.

No. No, they haven't. There was still time.

His hold became desperate and too strong, but Serenity didn't protest. Instead, she raised her hands to his cheeks, and he blinked when her eyes found his.

They were so full of sorrow and regret.

Only when her tender and pale hands started to wipe at his cheeks did he realise they had been wet.

No.

She curled her soft hand around his cheek, the tips of her fingers slipping against his ear and into his hair and she tugged him down with the lightest of pressure that still always would cause him to collapse against her immediately.

His lips found hers like a drowning man his saviour, and he whimpered into her mouth. The kiss was soft and slow and hard and painful all at once.

He wrenched his lips away from hers with a growl, appalled.

She was kissing him in the way she was kissing him every time she attempted to say goodbye – all those times when she insisted she was 'setting him free'.

She was giving him up. Again.

No. He wouldn't let her.

He snarled and this time it was him who emprisioned her face, trapping her cheeks with both his hands and boring into her eyes.

"No," he growled, almost feral. "This is not goodbye."

"Endymion," she breathed, eyes shining and full of pity and remorse and crushing, painful grief - it screamed in his soul; an ugly, crushing sound. "You know they're right. This is wise."

He shook her, ever so softly and yet so very vehemently.

"No," he bit out. He was angry at her and angry at the world and angry at his court and angry at the royal colors in this room and so, so, so angry.

When he kissed her again it was demanding and possessive, his tongue invading and his teeth bruising as he claimed her lips as his. She whimpered, but her hands fisted in his hair and her tongue dove just a deep as his did. Desperate. Hanging on by a thread.

When he released her just as suddenly, eyes blown wide in panic and rush, her face still trapped in his dark hands against her porcelain skin, the adrenaline under his fingertips turned from despair to hope.

"Marry me," he pressed out, his eyes jumping between hers as her forehead crinkled into a pitying frown. "Marry me tonight."

She blinked, her gentle fingers curling around his wrists where he held her face imprisioned.

If he was already married, he could not be married off in this war against his will. Even if they kept it secret, her ring would keep him safe once the day came, so would the laws of Elysion.

He could not lose her if he was already hers.

The hope curled up in his throat and in his chest and in his face and it spilled out in tears that were not at all under his control.

"Please," he sobbed, pulling her face closer and laying his forehead against hers, the glimmering thrum of her insignia against his skin a grounding force, squeezing his eyes shut.

Her hands were so very gentle when they stroked his cheeks.

He nearly swallowed his heart when he heard her soft and shaky "ok."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Silver Millennium


	39. A Kiss Because Time Has Run Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Wednesday, everyone! Here you go, this one is in complete contrast to the one before ;)

_Happy Wednesday, everyone! Here you go, this one is in complete contrast to the one before ;)_

* * *

A Kiss Because Time Has Run Out

* * *

Usagi hissed, annoyed and irritated and biting back the juvenile urge to kick the infuriating thing something proper. Maybe to transform right here and put some power behind it for good measure.

The screen mocked her anyway.

GAME OVER

Bad day. Very bad day. Maybe a Remless could show up that she could kick for a few rounds instead?

For a second she considered to just go over to the coin changer and slip a bill inside for a new round of 100 Yen coins. Just one more try, Mamoru never needed to know.

But she knew. And she'd promised.

With a growl and a slump to her shoulders, she grabbed her purse and made her rather sluggish way down the side of the arcade, out the door, around the building, and up the stairs to the second floor of the adjourned fruit parlor.

She stomped her foot when she stopped at the booth he was waiting at.

He raised his eyes, adorable glasses and all, from the stack of opened books and notebooks that surrounded him. The moment their eyes met, and he took in her moue, his eyes softened and his lips quirked up in sympathy.

"Didn't beat your high score?" he asked with a soft smile and a sympathetic furrow to his brow. He could be really, really sweet sometimes.

She pouted harder and sighed. "Time ran out just before," she moped with a dejected sigh.

He huffed through his nose in his growing smile.

But when she made to slip into her side of the booth, where her book bag with her homework waited for her, he grabbed her wrist and drew her to him instead.

With the tiniest surprised noise, she landed expertly in his lap, sideways with her legs hanging off the side of the booth, and she looked at him with widening eyes and a widening smile.

He shrugged, and she snuggled against him and the rumble in his chest from his short laugh.

One of his arms slipped around her waist, her hands curled into his free hand on his lap, and she pushed her face against his neck with a happy sigh.

It was a secluded corner, the parlor was almost empty, she knew he wouldn't do this otherwise, and she was prepared to enjoy every rare second of this while it lasted.

"Want me to buy you a milkshake to cheer you up?" he asked, amusement clear in his voice, and then she felt him press his lips to her temple in a sweet, small peck of a kiss.

_Oh, you're already cheering me up._

But she didn't say that. Who was she to decline free milkshakes while sitting in her boyfriend's lap instead of solving annoying math problems? She would take it all as long as her luck lasted.

"Yes please," she said instead and sighed in pure bliss, then withdrew one hand from his and pulled a little at his shirt, wriggling herself into the most comfortable cuddle position possible.

Good day. No weird circus monsters allowed today, go away.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Super S


	40. A Kiss At The End Of The World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thursday, guys! Here, have a new and angsty kiss!

* * *

A Kiss At The End Of The World

* * *

Serenity screamed. She couldn't help it. He'd told her to be quiet but the boom was so loud she couldn't keep it in, she shrieked and held her ears and fell to her knees and Endymion yanked her up, shouting at her to be quiet even louder than she'd screamed, and dragged her after him across the floor with eyes that looked more frightened than the panic she even felt herself.

Her world was burning, her lungs were whistling pitifully with the effort to breathe, the Moon Palace one giant flame of destruction. Smoke was filling her view and her body, blackening the sweat-drenched silks of her gown and burning in her throat and her eyes, and she knew for a fact they could not hide here any longer.

She would have been long dead had Endymion not run for the danger to sneak her out. The first explosion, disturbing the peace and dead of night with the force of a sonic boom, had taken her chambers. Had Endymion not deserted his own people, fleeing just to rescue her, she would have been the first casualty of this war. And she knew she was still its most wanted target.

He knew it too. His shaking fingers and wet, manic eyes spoke of nothing else as he pushed her forcefully, brutally into corners, hiding her with his complete body like a crazed, frightened animal sheltering their young.

But where they were going, there were no more corners or walls to back her into.

They'd hid in the smoke as long as they could, but if they didn't leave now, they would suffocate, filled with black poison long before the flames could take them or the rubble could bury them.

The castle was no more; a dead, screaming ball of flame, surrounded completely by a people possessed by hate; the lust to kill shining in seduced eyes. They thought they were right. They thought it was their right. Her death was a promise they'd learned to yearn for; it came with lies of a better world for them, a world where they'd be more important than they felt.

The only way out was over burning stone bridges designed not to shroud anyone's path, right through masses of people that wanted her slaughter.

Endymion ripped the cloak off a man's dead body; contorted in death with his hands grabbing at his frail old throat, and wrapped her in it, drawing its hood over her head to hide her away, then cradled her and dragged her out. It made breathing even harder and sweat run like tears from her body.

He turned back to her just in view of the gates, pushing his hands into her hood, shaking her dirty face and leaning in with panicked eyes.

"I'm going to get you out of here," he cried at her, eyes wild. "I promise. I'm going to keep you safe. We'll survive this."

It was a lie. They both knew it was. But they had no other choice but to try and believe it.

She didn't nod. She didn't say yes. She couldn't lie to him. Instead she yanked at him and he fell into her.

His lips hit hers violently, harshly. Bruised and smokey and chapped and shaking in terror. She sucked him in as if she could keep him like that, and he did the same to her.

They kissed like it was their last kiss because it was; crying and desperate and hungry for life. They clung.

She was still clinging, gripping his hand so tight she must have cracked the bone, when he pushed the gates open and ran out with his sword raised in one hand.

They ran out screaming, hand in hand.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Silver Millennium
> 
> I'm… sorry?


	41. A Kiss Because The World Is Saved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand another week done! Happy Friday everyone - these kisses are going to be over so much sooner than I think, now?! This one is new one, again.

* * *

A Kiss Because The World Is Saved

* * *

She's been running for a while now. On and on and on through dark, bricked vaults that went on endlessly, with tireless legs and never slowing down, never looking back, hitting enemy after enemy. Blonde hair flapped behind her, red and blue fuku almost her only weapon.

It was almost eerie how easy it suddenly was, how effortless it felt, how fast she came through, jumping and somersaulting across enemy after enemy, as if something had boosted her into invincibility.

Just a little bit more. Just a tiny fraction more. She could almost taste the victory. She'd never been this fast ever before.

She could win this. This time there was no way she wouldn't survive.

She jumped - an elegant double flick, not a hair out of place, and hit the monster square on the head - it went down without so much as a twitch, and then she ran into the light.

Usagi's arms flew up in a joyous scream that spooked the other patrons when her tiny Sailor V cleared the final stage with a full high score.

_YOU WIN,_ the arcade machine flashed at her in pink capital letters and she did a little victory dance on her stool.

Beside her, sitting on a stool at an unused machine, Mamoru was smiling at her over his book.

"Saved the world again, I take it?"

He threw her a half smile, not really taking her Very Important Joy seriously, but she didn't mind.

"Third time in a row!" she cheered excitedly, hands up in the air.

And then his smile slipped into a real one, a genuine one. A proud one.

He leaned over suddenly; pressed a hard, insistent kiss against her forehead, his hand grabbing the back of her neck, his lips lingering.

"That you did," he said softly against her skin and she blinked.

Right. That _had _been the third one…

And then he let her go, leaned forward, and slipped another 100 Yen coin into her slot, and the game woke up again.

She beamed only for a second before she dove back in to round four, and he went back to his book.

Yesterday, she'd jumped into a black hole after Sailor Saturn and came out alive with a baby in her arms.

Today he insisted she could play as long as she'd like. His treat.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: S


	42. A Kiss Out Of Pride

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Monday, guys! It's the penultimate week of these kisses! Today's another new one and I hope you enjoy!

* * *

A Kiss Out Of Pride

* * *

It was a mess of a battle. They were rusty and it was awful and they made stupid mistakes.

They'd beat Galaxia a year ago and no new enemy had surfaced, but sometimes, like always, something weird happened. A vengeful spirit, some corporal evil energy, an experiment gone wrong, you name it. Sometimes, rarely, they had to suit up.

But Venus had been caught off guard and Jupiter misjudged the distance of her thunder and Mamoru felt like he had two left feet all of a sudden, or as if this was his first ever tango all over again.

It didn't get better when Mars and then even Uranus and Neptune arrived on the scene. How'd they all suddenly gotten so _bad _at this? It had only been what, half a year?

He was loath to admit that Luna and Artemis might be on to something. Maybe they _did _need regular training...

Then Uranus hurled her World Shaking accidently into the hut across - which was thankfully devoid of inhabitants but exploded on them in soda and rubble, and obscured their sight long enough for Mamoru to manage to accidently pin Jupiter into a tree via roses instead of the enemy attacking her, for Mars to light the grass underneath him on fire, and the enemy to cackle in manic laughter as it shimmered back into hovering more-or-less corporeal existence above them.

What even was it? Spirit? Troll? God of Mischief turned rogue? Someone's nightmare turned on them?

They were doing an awful job, and their downturned faces all spoke of wary frustration.

Until Sailor Moon arrived.

She _did _look a little like an angel with her wings and the light coming from behind her.

"Hey!" she'd yelled with a giant grin of a smile, hand on her hip and one scolding finger held up. "Having all the fun without me?"

It was Rei, of course, who gave her the dirtiest look among them.

And then she swooped in, and suddenly it was easy.

At one point he just simply stood there, mesmerized, watching, completely and utterly unneeded like the rest of them. She was magnificent. She bantered with the thing and it bantered back and forgot to even attack, and Sailor Moon sparkled and saved them all with a wink and a beam of a smile, and one twirl of blasting pink and white powerful magic later, and the spirit was freed. Not destroyed - Usagi did not destroy. Usagi made you whole again.

He was still staring at her when it was all over.

"What?" she eventually said as they stood opposite each other in the same alley to detransform, crinkling her nose in adorable confusion.

He sighed, maybe a bit too reverent, and leaned forward, invading all her space until his forehead leaned against hers, the crescent moon warm and tingling against his skin, his top hat completely in the way, and sighed that absolutely whipped sigh once more. She was magnificent.

"What?!" she asked again, this time with a laugh, if more confusion.

His gloves on the back of her neck were maybe too insistent, and the way his sigh continued into her mouth maybe a little weird, and she giggled in absolute confusion even when he grinned right back and kissed her with insistent, little, happy kisses to her mouth, her cheeks, her crescent moon insignia.

He was just so proud. So, so, _so_ proud.

"Mamo-chan!" she giggled, her gloved hands at the crook of his elbow and crinkling the tuxedo fabric, and he was kissing and kissing and kissing and allowed to worship the most powerful person in the world, and he was just so very fucking proud of her.

It didn't matter if all of them sucked from time to time. Sailor Moon had got them covered, even if she was prone to falling on her pretty butt, sometimes.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Post-Stars
> 
> And yeah I'm proud of our girl too. She's badass.


	43. Greedy Kisses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Tuesday, everyone! This is a new kiss for your coffee break again, and I hope you enjoy it!

* * *

Greedy Kisses

* * *

Mamoru froze in sudden panic when he entered his apartment and found his expensive couch cushions littered in open buckets of paint, the rest of his furniture pushed away, and Usagi on the floor with a paint brush in her mouth, kneeling with pink-spotted knees on his hardwood floor over a giant bedspread or two that were hopefully not his.

She looked up with a bright, beaming smile and almost dropped the brush, mumbling a "Welcome home," around it.

He blinked at her, then down at the bed sheets. She'd started writing a giant character in pink paint.

"What are we doing," he asked carefully, intoning it more like an accusation than a question, and dropped his jacket and his books without taking his eyes off the buckets balanced on the leather.

"Mama's making me do all sorts of things for her because I broke the washing machine," she said with a shrug, and swirled her paintbrush in one of the wobbly buckets.

He winced, and made his way quickly to her side, though only to carefully lift the buckets from his property, and onto the side of the second of the sheets instead.

She threw him a look.

"And your mother is making you do things _here_?" he asked with a lifted eyebrow, and pushed his sleeves up his forearms, then lifted the next bucket. "And how'd you manage to break a washing machine?"

Of course, she decided to answer the latter, not the former. "I forgot to take my brooch off before dropping my school uniform in the wash. Turns out the silver crystal doesn't like getting washed."

He threw her a hard and entirely judgemental and entirely unsurprised look, because of course his girlfriend would accidently put the most powerful object in the universe into a washing machine.

She swirled her brush back into one of the buckets and drew another wonky line.

He knelt beside her. "What are we writing?" he asked, and lifted a corner of the fabric to rub across it.

Nope. None of his. Phew.

Usagi stuck the paint brush back in her mouth as she reached for something and he rolled his eyes and pried the brush from her lips at the same time to hold it instead.

'DO YOUR BEST, YOU LITTLE BRAT!' The sample paper she held up read in rainbow colored script, surrounded by pink hearts.

"Chibiusa's competing in this school competition thingy tomorrow. We're making banners to support her," she explained, and retrieved the brush.

He huffed, and took the brush right back from her, dipping it himself, but in a way that _didn't _endanger his rental apartment.

"Let me," he grumbled.

He worked quickly, and much more precise, than Usagi had. And while she still took a smaller brush and provided the hearts, he took the liberty to go off script and wrote in his neatest calligraphy, 'Do your best, Chibiusa-chan!'.

She hummed, watching him work. "Mamo-chan's handwriting is so much prettier than mine," she murmured in a sing-song kind of voice, chin in her hand, elbow on her knee, red-tipped paint brush painting in the air with her free hand, which he eyed nervously out of the corner of his eye.

He rolled his eyes again but couldn't suppress the smile.

"Hmm," she continued kind of absently. "My beautiful Mamo-chan is so much better at it this than I am."

It wasn't the self-depreciating kind of remark. More the 'put Mamoru on a pedestal' kind of remark with that soft kind of dreamy voice she sometimes had when she talked about him, and he blushed, and rolled his eyes even harder.

"Ah," he deadpanned without looking up, dipping the brush into the next color. "And what does my beauty have to do with it?"

Usagi proceeded to drape herself against his back, curling her hands around him to stroke against his stomach absentmindedly. He felt her cheek rub against his spine.

"Nothing," she sighed into his back, dropping all her weight on him. "It's just your moniker. Ya know, Alexander the Great, Mamoru the Pretty," she said, and pulled at his shirt. It stretched down enough so she could drop a kiss against the nape of his neck.

He chuckled, and she climbed a little higher on his back, wrapped around his chest now, her knees digging into his butt, and settled her face into the crook of his neck so they were cheek to cheek.

"I see I've been immediately demoted," he commented, then threw her a smirk.

He earned an eye roll in return that mimicked his previous one almost exactly, and she detangled herself from him as he wrote the last character.

"There," he said, and deposited the brush into the paint water glass. Then he stole hers and dropped it in there too, before his chin was captured.

She drew him to her, a warm smile shining in the little adorable smile lines at her eyes. "Thank you," she purred, and leaned up.

He came immediately, of course, and dropped a small peck of a kiss onto her lips. And then another, and another, and another.

Only when the kisses turned a little longer, a little more lingering, and her soft lips started moving a little more sensually, did he withdraw.

There were open paint buckets all around them. On his hardwood floors.

She wrinkled her nose cutely. "Hmmmm," she hummed again. "I want more."

He grinned a too toothy grin at her, too smug and challenging, and he knew he should dial it down for the safety of his floors, but he didn't.

Instead he flirted back like the helpless idiot he was.

"Aren't we greedy today?" he purred right back.

She was already back on her knees, between his spread legs this time, wrapping her arms slowly around his shoulders and nodded a too smug smile right back at him. "Mhmm," she hummed back. "Always." - And leaned in.

He sighed, gave up, tilted his head, opened his mouth, and played his favorite game of 'what ice cream flavor did she eat today' as she melded herself to his lips.

He still cursed loudly when, a little later, the first bucket toppled over.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Super S
> 
> In a somewhat unrelated note, I'm having trouble with tomorrow's kiss. It's an old one from tumblr (A Kiss Out Of Lust), and while I black the scene out once they do something about that lust, it's very… apparent in his mind. I don't want to yank up the rating for one single kiss and I also am absolutely unsure whether it would even be necessary, aka, if I can have it pass as T if you squint. But also my squinting is very biased so I don't know if it counts. Anyway, I guess you'll find out tomorrow what I decided and if it gets posted here, or if I skip a day, or well… we'll see.
> 
> (Tbf, I think it would be a shame to leave it out. It's in my personal top 5 of all the kisses…)


	44. Chapter 44

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Wednesday, everyone!
> 
> \---PLEASE READ BEFORE YOU CONTINUE!---: 
> 
> With today's theme (lust) this kiss is a little steamier than the previous ones. And, while in my culture here where I live, none of the following would be considered for an adult rating AT ALL and totally be rated the equivalent of T (here in my parts of Europe healthy sexual themes without violence that are much much muuuuch more explicit than this would still get a T, while many violent (non-sexual) themes that the US rate as T would get a very fast M), I do think in the US this kiss might be seen as a mild-ish M. But, I've decided that just because of one steamy and appreciative daydream in 50 chapters, I am not going to yank up the rating for the whole fic. However, just to be sure, this chapter is rated differently than the rest of the fic: 
> 
> \---OTHER THAN THE REST OF THIS FIC, THIS CHAPTER IS RATED A (VERY MILD) M. ---
> 
> So, please skip it if you're underage for these things in your country, or if these things are not to your liking.
> 
> However, this little story is definitely very sex-positve as all my work is, depicting loving partners in a healthy dynamic as is understood in the year 2019, and the characters are of age, and I blend out before stuff happens, so… ;)
> 
> Anyway, I hope you have fun with this!

* * *

A Kiss Out Of Lust

* * *

He had a problem.

A very stiff, very hard, very pressing problem.

Ami had called it a weird anomaly. Maybe a stray daimon egg, or someone messing with dark magic they shouldn't have, maybe an angry spirit. Either way, it had been laughably easy to defeat, even if Usagi had been particularly clumsy due to the early hour of the morning. After only a little fuss, the thing - whatever it was - had been defeated, just right before his first class began. He even got there in time, even if he'd had to rush from the scene.

…Maybe he shouldn't have rushed from the scene.

Mamoru had no clue what was wrong. He couldn't remember any substance he got into contact with during the fight that could have caused… this. Whatever this was.

It had gotten worse throughout the day.

He'd been relatively fine starting out, his mind not _unusually_ preoccupied seeing he had just seen his girlfriend suited up and fighting an enemy for the first time in months, and he wasn't _used_ to the sight anymore and it Did Things to him on _any_ good day, especially when he'd been keeping his distance to let her study in piece for her final graduation exams. And so, starting out, he hadn't thought anything the matter. His mind drifting off to the way she flushed in action, to the coy and proud smile she'd shot him when she'd kicked some weird-spirit ass, her soft skin when he lifted her out of the trajectory, the way she stretched and yawned and gave him a happy kiss on his nose when it was all over like the friggin adorable person she was.

Sailor Moon turned him on. That wasn't news. That was _normal_. What was _not_ normal was the way it seemed to have taken over every single thought in his mind.

The thoughts about her soft skin turned into fantasies that made him flush and uncomfortable because he _wasn't_ like that he _wasn't_ so lewd, he _didn't_ think about flipping the skirt of her Fuku up and nudging the bodice aside and burrowing himself into her with her heavy panting against his throat as he did it again and again, right the second he could steal her away straight from the battle, that was _not_ where his mind went, except it apparently now did.

By the time his second class of the day rolled around in direct succession, he wasn't able to take notes anymore.

Legs crossed uncomfortably to hide his problem, he was an absolute mess. The seminar was on the musculoskeletal system, one of the most unsexy things one could imagine, except his imagination today was dialed up to a hundred and the muscoloskeletal system did include legs. Usagi's legs. Usagi's legs thrown across his shoulders, Usagi's legs clamped around his waist, his hands digging into the pink flesh to hold her up, Usagi's thighs as he spread them apart slowly, running his hands softly up the insides until she opened up for him with a sigh and a whimper, Usagi's thighs as they straddled his face.

He didn't make it to his lunch-time study group. He really barely made it home. He had to transform and take the scenic roof-top route because there was no way he could sit on the metro with that insistent, troubling, infuriatingly distracting boner.

Back home, cold shower didn't help, taking… care of it …didn't help, and he was staring at his ceiling in despair with his hair still wet from his shower and in just his tented sweatpants (cause looking at it made him even _more_ uncomfortable), contemplating how he would ever find the courage to pick up his phone and call for Ami's expertise and find words to explain his current problematic situation which wouldn't make him die a thousand deaths in embarrassment in the process and also never travel to Minako's ears.

He refrained from shouting all the relieved profanity through his apartment when Sailor Moon burst through his open balcony door.

She came to a stop in front of his couch, looking down at him and his problem with hooded eyes and heaving breaths and flushed skin, and a look that would have undressed him had he been more dressed.

He cried out for real when she de-transformed, both because no more Fuku and because the exploding ribbons left her naked for a _second_ and _god no, why, don't, no, don't go back to CLOTHES…_

The frustrated cry was swallowed by her mouth as she launched herself into his lap and that was _painful_ because his problem was _so painful, _and he cried out again when she settled onto it fully and groaned into his mouth in exactly the same way.

"Were we drugged?" she whimpered against his ear when his teeth found her collarbone.

"I think so," he said, hands up her shirt and throwing it behind him because really, why the hell would she be wearing clothes?

"Do we care?" she rasped when he lifted her up from his lap by the hips to yank at her pants.

"No," he growled, and shook his head so hard it almost made him dizzy. He pulled her back towards his lips, groaning at the way her mouth was kind of paradise and her tongue was all sorts of way too talented at making him whimper and beg and really, this wasn't such a problem, after all, was it?

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Post-Stars


	45. A Kiss In Anger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand happy Thursday guys! Only 5 more to go! This feels like a countdown.
> 
> This one was originally written as a gift for MamaladyKT
> 
> (I'll be honest it's been a whirlwind posting these daily-ish and I'm not sure I'll attempt anything similar EVER AGAIN lol but I'm happy there were people who enjoyed these, and I'm proud I managed all of these!) Anyway, as always, I hope you enjoy it, and if you let me know (like, also in general!) that ALWAYS makes me super happy!

* * *

A Kiss In Anger

* * *

It was one time too many. One time too cruel.

She couldn't take his gentle touch around her midriff today, the worried, panicked eyes as he'd snatched her up and cradled her too softly and too caring. His shining, tortured eyes as he set her down, his lingering hands.

She couldn't take it today.

It all flared up on her skin in white-hot anger, in visceral, gutting fury that crawled up her throat and burned her tongue and made the tears boil in her eyes.

She took it all out on Rubeus. For the first time since they'd been up against him and the Ayakashi Sisters, there was something akin to fear in his eyes, or maybe respect.

The girls looked at her warily after he'd fled with Calaveras, and their droid was long dust.

It all sat in her chest and came out her trembling hands and in furious tears, and she was so _angry_.

Mako-chan and Rei both called after her in concerned voices as she bolted, jumped up the nearest banister, into the trees and back into the maze of grey buildings. _Out_.

She didn't notice the loose shingle, cursed, shrieked, slipped and skidded right off the roof.

Because Usagi was a crybaby and a klutz no matter if she was Sailor Moon, and Mamoru didn't want her like that. Had maybe never wanted her at all.

She wasn't perfect, she was no princess, she was no warrior. She was just Usagi.

Even when she braced herself for impact, arms tight across her face, she never ended up falling.

Tuxedo Mask settled her down on her feet in the alley below and looked at her with stern, judging eyes and stared her down.

She stared right back, jaw pressed so tight it hurt, cursing the tears, cursing the shake of her whole body, cursing him.

"What's wrong, Usagi," he growled, all tenseness, all accusation. It made it all worse. As if he didn't know. As if it wasn't his fault.

It wasn't fair.

It's exactly what she ended up shouting at him, though it might have been an angry snarl or even a whisper, she wasn't entirely sure what her voice was doing. She'd switched to auto-pilot.

"It's not fair!" she cried.

His sigh was so deep it lifted his shoulders even when it didn't move the frowny glare from his eyes even a tad, and he ripped his mask off to glare at her harder, or whatever.

"What isn't _fair_, Usagi?" he hissed back. As if he was angry too. Angry at it all and the world and that he had to be around her still and it _hurt_.

She took a step towards him, even when he remained rooted to the spot. He didn't move when she lifted her balled fist and left it hovering above his heart.

"That you're still gentle. That you're still the boy I love," she whispered angrily. "That you keep hurting me."

His look sobered instantly, but he didn't move. Not at all. Even less.

"That you broke up with me," she spat at his chest, her voice little more than a snarl, "and I can't do anything about it."

Her fist finally connected with his chest. She wanted to punch. She wanted to so badly. But it was little more than a soft thud, and her fist loosened to stroke above his hammering, angry heart.

Her voice was broken snarling and angry hiccups, the tears were so wrong they made her feel ashamed but they kept spilling. "That you don't love me anymore and I just have to live with it?!" she screeched, and lifted her hand and this time it was at least a weak, pathetic slap, but a slap anyway.

When she looked up at him, his eyes were full of tears too, and full of shame, and full of regret.

But of course, he didn't say anything to make it better, and he didn't take it back.

"It's not fair, that you can just decide this and I have no choice about it!" she screeched.

"Usako…"

The soft word made her retreat her hand as if burned, and she looked up at him in betrayal.

"It's not fair!" she whispered, and he nodded with swimming eyes and a quivering chin as if he agreed.

And when she reached up and knocked the stupid hat off his head he didn't even flinch. And when she reached out again and pulled him down to her by the back of his neck he came pliantly, and when she kissed him, angry and spiteful and biting his lip too hard and attacking his lips too furiously, he kissed her back - too soft and too gentle and full of regret.

He was crying harder than she was. It was his fault, after all.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: R


	46. A Jealous Kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Friday guys! This is actually one of two jealous kisses I ended up writing for this prompt – in the original ask game that started this all, this was actually the most requested kiss, the jealous one!
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!

* * *

A Jealous Kiss

* * *

She loved these college parties. Especially since she graduated and decided not to ever in a million years grace any university with her presence, she enjoyed living this "only perk of university-life" vicariously through him.

And so he found himself at another of these now way too frequent university parties as of late. One more of the likes he had been so careful to avoid at all costs before, and now sought out to be invited to just because she enjoyed them so.

She humored his wishes. It wasn't that they pretended not to be together, nothing like that, not at all - he wouldn't want that. But she respected his wishes far more carefully here than she usually did and kept a slight and modest distance for the sake of his need for privacy, knowing public displays of affection made him uncomfortable. She was still affectionate with him, sweet with him. But she only ever brushed the tips of his fingers when he got her a drink, smiled up at him with her adorably crinkling nose and that heart-stabbing, faint spray of freckles that came out when she blushed, but never came too close, even when she, occasionally, seldomly, came to him and stood on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear and he leaned his whole body towards her - because it might have been his wish but it didn't keep him from yearning for her touch and closeness all the same.

Tonight was torture.

He grabbed the bottle he'd been nursing for the past hour in a too tight grip.

These guys weren't even the first people he'd overheard talking about her in this way tonight. By far. She was gorgeous tonight, he was well aware of it. She was gorgeous _always_.

Usagi was laughing, dancing, luscious gold hair bouncing around her bright, wide laughing face as she danced through the night in that too short skirt, radiating joy. She'd started the night dancing with Saori, made friends on the dance floor and howled delighted compliments to them that made them blush and flush and smile at her in touched pleasure, boys and girls alike; danced with Asanuma later and kept encouraging him to speak to that girl he seemed to like who she'd met earlier.

She was pure sunshine, and everyone seemed as drawn to her as him. It was painful, aching torture, even if it made complete sense to him that they would see her in that way, too.

_Do you think she's single? _

_Have you seen that butt? How could she be?_

_I hope she is._

_I really want those legs around me not gonna lie._

_Maybe she is single? I hope she's single._

_Can you imagine? Those wanton sighs she made with those cupcakes? I bet she makes those in bed._

_Get your mind out the gutter, dude._

_Come on guys, don't tell me you didn't think the same._

_She arrived with Chiba. Maybe she's with him._

_That stick up the butt? C'mon, such a fun girl as her would be with someone more exciting_.

_I saw her at Kobayashi's party last week, too. She arrived with Chiba then, as well._

_Maybe they're friends?_

A snort. _Yeah right, no way. They're like, polar opposites. What would they even talk about?_

_Maybe they're related?_

_Maybe_.

_Are you gonna make a move? You could go up and try to dance with her. I mean, don't be a creep but, you know._

_Yeah, maybe worth a try._

_She's totally cute. I bet she might be into yo_ _u._

_Yeah dude, you totally should. You're fun, she's fun…_

There was only so much he could take. He'd endured it for a while, much longer than he'd have antipated, until he burst.

The irritation flew through him so hard, he was surprised the glass bottle didn't crack under his hold, and didn't crack when he smashed it onto the windowsill when he pushed off towards the dance floor in single-minded intensity.

He must have looked intimidating. His stride was fast and determined and the crowd parted for him and looked up.

Usagi was still giggling, eyes closed and jumping in joy around one of his co-eds who stopped dancing to look at him with surprise, when he reached out.

He shot out one arm around her shoulders, the other grabbing just beneath her butt, and lifted her off the ground and to his lips in one single motion.

She shrieked, and the look in her eyes changed from surprise to… _surprise_, when he crashed his lips to hers and his tongue right into her mouth, and she gasped and melted into him and wrapped her arms tightly around his neck.

He didn't hold a hand in front of their mouths to shield their surroundings from possibly, _maybe_ seeing a glimpse of his tongue moving against hers. He didn't move them to a secluded corner and wait till no one looked. He did none of the things he usually would. Instead, he did the exact opposite. Lifting her high, his hand splayed across her bottom, his neck craning up towards her lips as she threaded her hands into his hair and attacked his mouth right back, because if there was one thing Usagi would always be able to do, it was reading his emotions and moods and giving him what he needed.

Right now he kind of needed to brand her. As embarrassing and childish and petty as it was. Thankfully she seemed ok with that.

He only started blushing when he caught her sparkling, amused eyes when he dropped her back on her feet, and she bopped his nose with her finger with that glint in her eye that bulleted right through him, before she let him go back into his corner.

He went back after assuring her in whispers to her ear that he hadn't lost his marbles, and that she looked really pretty in that skirt, and dancing like that. And he brushed by the group of guys he'd overheard earlier on purpose, shoved forcefully right through them.

"She's not single," he growled, unseeing, to them all, and delighted way too much in the way they jumped, parting in the middle and away from him, looking at him in this startled, embarrassed, intimidated way.

He settled back against the wall, grabbed his beer where he'd left it. When Usagi's beaming smile and wave found him from the dance floor, he couldn't help but smile back.

He grabbed her hand and led her away with very clear and visible intentions about half an hour later, on a path that paraded her in front of every single person he'd overheard talking about her tonight. It felt satisfying in a way that was entirely wrong, and entirely exciting, and he would never be admitting ever.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Post-Stars


	47. A Kiss Out Of Spite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Monday guys! LAST WEEK OF THESE! CRAZY! Here's a new one for you and I hope you enjoy!

* * *

A Kiss Out Of Spite

* * *

Sailor Moon cursed loudly around the crash she caused, jumped a fence noisily as she de-transformed, and Tsukino Usagi in her place climbed off property she should not be at, especially close to midnight on a school night. She promptly shrieked loudly and fell off it landing flat on her face in the grass because her orange jacket got tangled in the bars.

She grumbled, rubbing her butt, and mumbled enraged obscenities under her breath over the ruckus she'd already made over the stupid youma and her stupid life, as she hopped onto the low wall that seperated her from non-private property.

And then she shrieked again, because Mamoru-baka stood right in front of her, one eyebrow raised, and she froze mid-hop, eye twitching.

"Oi," he deadpanned. She supposed it was meant to be a greeting. But he just stood there, one hand on his hip, watching her with that obnoxious way he sometimes stared at her in calculation.

"Ugh," she groaned. It was pure reaction, zero intention.

What a fitting sequence of a greeting for the two of them, she supposed.

He smirked, eyebrow still attached somewhere near his hairline all the same.

"Don't you need to get your beauty sleep?" She glared at him and settled onto a seated position on the wall, dangling her legs.

He raised the other eyebrow, too. Made a pointed show of looking at his watch. "Don't _you _need to go back in the pantry with the other buns?"

She threw him the most withering look she could produce, and hoped it was sufficiently acidic. But he only chuckled, his eyes sparkling way too much. She kicked her shin against the wall in irritation.

He broke their staring fest first.

"You're out awfully late," he said, his tone all accusation.

Well, _duh_.

"What's it to you," she snarked, crossing her arms, and kicked the wall again with the back of her heel.

His eyes pinched together, looking at her in a way that saw a little too much. But his serious expression made way for that shit-eating smirk once more.

"Why the big pout," he purred. "Did Motoki run out of milkshakes? No, wait. Someone beat you in your high score."

She sighed and threw him another of her acid looks. "I do have real problems, you know."

But he just prattled on. "Conbini ran out of your favorite snacks? Someone else wrote you a love letter again?"

She glared. Hard. Flicked her hair back over her shoulder and pouted.

His smirk faltered when she didn't react in the way he wanted her to, and he looked down the barely lit street. "For real though. You shouldn't be out so late at this hour. You live nearby, don't you?"

She chose to ignore him and watched him instead. He just steadily met her gaze, waiting in that irritatingly patient way that tended to make her open her mouth and say stupid things just to end the silence.

"The only love letter I ever got was a fake," she reminded him stupidly. "But. Maybe one day."

He cocked his head at her and frowned, but kept silent.

She hopped off the wall and brushed by his shoulder and started walking off.

"Hey!" he called after her. "You shouldn't be out alone at night."

She ignored him, fully expecting him to walk off in the other direction.

Instead, he fell into step beside her and she groaned.

"Who do you want to get love letters from then, Odango?" He was just keeping the stupid conversation going to rile her up, she knew him. But his voice was warm for once, and she could not deny she liked that tone on him.

But she could. She could deny it vehemently. "Pft," she snorted, and turned her nose up into the air dramatically. "As if I'd tell _you_."

When she peeked back up at him, the smirk was back. Full on. "Don't tell me it's _me_," he said with that _tone_. Ugh.

She bristled. "Oh, you're just so full of yourself."

He chuckled, leaned towards her a little with those obnoxiously, irritatingly upturned lips, and she shrunk back a little, her cheeks heating. "I'm not the worst catch," he twinkled at her in mischief.

She glared. "You wish."

His laugh was deep. It sounded... nice.

"I bet you'd write the worst love letters," she accused, all the petulance in her strong.

He threw her a wink. The light of a street lamp they passed played with the shadows on his face, distractingly. "I'm quite good at haikus actually."

"Oh, _suuuure_."

That smirk again, and then he stopped, and she stopped too, and he patted his chest dramatically and cleared his throat theatrically and fixed her with a look that made something in her pop.

"You want love letters?

Oi, Odango Atama.

You're no pest today."

His smile was entirely too smug for a haiku so bad.

"Smooth," she deadpanned, unimpressed.

He just laughed that twinkling laugh again and shrugged. "A poem instead?"

He leaned back in, and this time she didn't lean away but tried to meet his petulant eyes full on. Had… Had Mamoru-baka always been this … _attractive_?

But then he opened his mouth and _that _came out - obnoxious and over-acting and ridiculous and how does he come _up _with this so fast? - and she was back to bristling and rolling her eyes.

"Shrieks boom so loud, who can it be but one? She shakes the ground, she makes _all _sound, no peace is found when she's around. Odango please, now can I bring you home?"

She tried to deck him. Slapped the back of her hand towards his chest, but the jerk _caught _it. And _laughed_.

But then she nearly choked, because he didn't free her captured hand. Instead he _winked_, and brought it to his lips instead, _obviously _only for the sole reason to spite her.

His lips were warm and they lingered against her knuckles, and his smirk over the kiss was somehow tingling through her spine like little ants spreading from her hand making her dizzy and _woah_.

His smile was soft, and his thumb brushed over her knuckles when his lips detached from her skin, and he didn't drop her hand - he guided it down, back to her side, and only removed his fingers when he'd safely returned it - and how was it so oddly _sweet_?

"Let's bring you home, Usagi," he said in a voice that was too soft for Mamoru-baka.

_Oh_.

She swallowed. Had trouble finding her voice. "O-okay," she breathed eventually, helplessly looking up at him with different eyes.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Classic
> 
> I like to think they had a few more moments pre-reveal to get a little chemistry going. So there. :)


	48. A Kiss Out Of Habit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Tuesday, guys! ^^ (Honestly, it's very surreal that I'll have the 50 full so soon…) Hope you enjoy!

* * *

A Kiss Out Of Habit

* * *

Endymion was irritated.

It crawled beneath his skin like an ever-present itch that he couldn't quite locate, forever out of his reach.

It wasn't the first time. He watched from the sidelines, his face so tense it physically hurt to unlock his jaw, his hands balled into fists.

Kunzite's youma had Sailor Moon cornered.

He found himself watching the doors and windows, snarled as he locked the stray hope away that the Senshi might appear to help her any second now.

No. This was the plan. Beryl wanted the Moon princess captured. He was a soldier of the Dark Kingdom.

The itch turned unbearable. He gasped aloud, it turned into a growl.

When Sailor Moon howled in pain, he snapped.

Her eyes looked at him in hopeful surprise when he hurled a black rose right into the youma's eye and lifted her away and out of the trajectory with one, too practiced, too familiar fit of his arm around her waist. She held on like she belonged.

The youma howled after him and with a growl from his angered lips, sparks flew from the rose in its eyesocket, rendering it to painful shrieking agony.

He didn't let go of Sailor Moon. In the corner of his eye he saw Mars and Jupiter arrive, but it only caused his grip to hold on tighter, his jump to lift higher.

He broke out through the windows and told himself it was because he wanted to be the one to capture the Moon princess. He wanted the glory.

And yet he felt no urge to present her to his Queen at all.

He could. He had her in his arms. More fully now, even. She didn't put up an ounce of fight, this trusting, naive idiot. His arm clutched tight around the back of her knees, the other cradled her to his chest. He could phase away right now and lay her at his Queen's throne.

The very thought had his gut twisted, the itch turning into crawling maggots, bitter bile creeping up his throat.

He set her on her feet on top of the nearest rooftop. The bright, contrasting lights of the Tokyo night sky shone in colorful magenta and blues from her shining, hopeful, naive eyes, as she looked up at him and settled her hands against his chest in a gesture that moved something in him, shifting something in him so forcefully he gasped again. Nudging, screaming, crying in his chest.

He swallowed it down with a hiss.

She pulled on his shirt, pulled him down towards her, her eyes on his lips.

"Mamo-cha–"

Before she could finish the uttering the offending word, _again_, he clawed his gloved hand into her shoulder and pressed his lips to hers.

She whimpered into his mouth, allowed it all; his hand as it drew around her waist and pressed her to his form, his tongue against her lower lip, swallowing her gasps with tortured sighs.

It wasn't habit. He knew it wasn't. He didn't kiss the enemy like this. This needy, this breathless, this _relieved_.

His chest cried out, the itch had stopped.

The urge to do this, though. Exactly _this;_ attack her mouth until she curled her hands into his hair, gripping him tight until it hurt him, crying into his mouth, falling under his spell.

The urge to kiss her like this was older than his memories.

The _urge_ to kiss her like this was the habit, the urge was the unbearable pull.

Whoever he had been before, whoever he was who had held back so often it was ingrained into his very skin… it was not him. Endymion was not someone who held back.

Endymion pushed Sailor Moon hard against the chimney behind her, pushing her up the bricks and closer against him as he ravaged her mouth, her neck, pressed his tongue flat against her jugular and hissed in pleasure at the frantic beat it hammered back against his aching lips, his skin singing at the way she keened and clawed her fingers against his scalp and into the tuxedo jacket almost wildly, wherever she could reach, pulling him even closer.

They kissed as if the other would disappear if they didn't.

No, Endymion did not hold back. Not at all. Not this time. Neither did she.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Classic (Evil Endymion arc)
> 
> So remember how Evil!Endymion was so absolutely bad? ? at being bad? ? and kept rescuing her like? All the time?


	49. A Necessary Kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Wednesday guys! This is another older one from tumblr that some of you ight remember, but I hope it enrches your coffee break nonetheless, today! Hope you enjoy!

* * *

A Necessary Kiss

* * *

It hurt to be around Usagi the most when she was looking like this.

"No!" Chibiusa cried, whirling around and clutching his hand harder. "I want to spend the day just with Mamo-chan! Not you! Go away!"

He snuck a glance as well, Usagi's shoulders fell and she sighed hard, dejected and miserable. Her eyes were stubbornly at her feet, but they were shining. It was the third time Chibiusa had done this.

"Look, I'll stay back as far as possible, ok?" Usagi said. It was barely audible, she was too far away. To stress her point, she'd slowed her steps even more, falling back even further.

He felt every inch of widening distance as a rift in his heart.

From what he had been able to patch together by their fighting, Usagi's mother had instructed Usagi to watch over Chibiusa today. Something the small girl hadn't particularly taken joy in. They'd run into Mamoru and Chibiusa had stubbornly clung to him.

When Usagi had looked about ready to cry, avoiding his eyes as he had hers, but Chibiusa didn't make any inclination to let go of him, he'd suggested he could accompany her to the playground for a little while.

Chibiusa had insisted they leave Usagi behind - Usagi had taken the obvious rejection with a roll of her eyes and a sigh, explaining they'd have to leave to get her to her doctor's appointment soon, and her Mama trusted her to not leave Chibiusa's side.

The solution had been that Usagi trailed a far distance behind them.

"No!" Chibiusa yelled again, later, at the playground, when Usagi showed the audacity to attempt to enter the small square and sit on a bench instead of leaning uncomfortably outside against the fence furthermore. "I don't want you here!" she shouted angrily.

"Chibiusa!" Mamoru hissed. He couldn't take it anymore, couldn't take the hurt look in Usagi's eyes every time Chibiusa did this.

Usagi was risking her life on a regular basis to take care of this strange child that had fallen from the sky. And even though he knew what childhood trauma looked like more than most people did, and he understood that since it was her Mama the girl cried for in her sleep and missed so much, and that it was thus harder for her to trust and accept females trying to take her Mama's place in any way possible - it still crawled beneath his skin with every venomous, small, high-pitched shout.

"I know, I know!" Usagi sighed. "It's the we-don't-want-Usagi-around club, I get it. None of you want me here. Nobody wants me here. I know, ok? Just pretend I'm air."

She sat on her bench, turned her back to them with a whirl of her hair and since she wasn't looking, he allowed his eyes to stay on her form.

Her shoulders were shaking, her hand was lifting towards her face, rubbing at her eyes.

He knew he was hurting her as much as Chibiusa was. Probably even more.

Chibiusa did it one more time when he'd attempted to leave them when it was time to leave for the girl's doctor's appointment. This time, Usagi didn't react at all anymore, just nodded silently. Chibiusa had only agreed to go when Mamoru had suggested he drive them there.

He sighed long and hard when he killed the engine. He tried to find Usagi's eyes behind him on the backseat through the rear-view mirror, but her eyes were cast on her knees, clutching the hem or her skirt as she reached for the door.

He flew from his seat and opened her door before she had the chance to. Chibiusa was still bouncing in the passenger seat.

Her eyes blinked up at him in surprise and it felt like a stab to his heart.

He wanted to keep her safe from him. That's why he did this, that's why he was breaking her heart.

Had he really taken it so far that she was surprised when he did something as decently normal as open a door for her?

Her eyes were wide and confused, her brow furrowed, her look so very, very dejected and lost.

He realised with a start that he was glaring at her. He was glaring at himself, really. But he knew that always came out wrong.

Chibiusa was chattering loudly, banging his door, demanding his attention and griping about Usagi's presence some more.

Trauma. It was trauma. It wasn't the kid's fault. But Usagi's eyes dulled over and her gaze fell to her feet even under his gaze, her sigh so pained it stabbed him right through the chest once more.

He curled his hand against the roof of his car, trapping her between his chest and the door when he leaned forward and pressed a hard kiss against her forehead.

There was nothing he could do to stop his lips. It was as necessary as breathing in this moment. He couldn't stop it.

He heard her gasp even when his lips lingered against her skin and he kept his eyes scrunched shut. Felt her fingers curl in his shirt and her skin tremble beneath his mouth.

"She doesn't mean it," he whispered with his lips against her skin.

_I don't mean it. _

When he finally realised what he was doing, he ripped away from her and cleared his throat.

"Better not keep the doctor waiting," he said awkwardly and moved away without looking her in the eyes.

He then moved to Chibiusa, made him promise her to be a little nicer to Usagi for him, could she do that?

It took Usagi a while to move away from where she'd remained leaning against his car.

Her shoulders were still slumped when she disappeared through the building's door, and she hadn't looked back at him once.

He hit the roof of his car with a frustrated fist, and hit his head against the back of his seat with his eyes scrunched closed when he'd slipped back into the car.

He hated himself even more today than usual.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: R (break up arc)
> 
> Ya know, that time when Chibs was still a traumatised little brat who could have used getting some exploration on, ya know, being a war-traumatised child? Cause, well, that would have been totally easy to explain.
> 
> Anyway, tomorrow's kiss is the 50 and I'll have MADE IT. I'll have written and posted the whole kiss prompt list! Wooooot!
> 
> Anyway, always and forever, I would love to hear if you enjoyed my work!


	50. A Kiss Out Of Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we go! Kiss Number 50! (It's a new one.) It's a crazy feeling to hit 'complete' on this story, ngl? Anyway, I hope you enjoy this coffee break, too! Happy Thursday!

* * *

A Kiss Out Of Love

* * *

"May I have this dance?" he'd asked, holding out his hand to her like the yearning beggar he suddenly was. It felt a little bit like falling to the tide, or maybe like surrendering - and maybe that was the scariest thing of all.

He'd been here for a reason, after all.

"Tuxedo Mask!" she'd cried first, and, "Yes!" she'd cried second, instantly, enthusiastically, her eyes roaming across him as she took his offered hand and he'd led her to the dance floor.

He didn't know why he'd known this was Sailor Moon right away. He didn't know why his brain set out and he was sure, so _sure_, that at least in this moment, she was also the princess from his dreams, the one waiting for him, however much he never really wanted her to.

In this moment he wanted her to wait for him very, very much.

And so, he led Sailor Moon with pearls in her golden hair and roses attached to the hem of her long gloves and flowing, flowing white silks around her legs, and made her dress flow even more as it swung around her in rippling waves.

He couldn't help the pressing feeling in his chest, the way her smile beamed up at him, the little giggle escaping as he spun her, dipped her, the delighted shriek when he lifted her.

He couldn't help it as all reason slipped away, and the grand ballroom in all its grandly lit decoration suddenly disappeared because all there remained was her.

She stepped on his foot once, twice, and then he lifted her again and swung her around and she wrinkled her nose at him adorably, and for a second she looked like Tsukino Usagi.

And somehow that made sense, too, for just a moment, and made his chest ache even harder.

He'd been here for a reason. He'd been here to find the Silver Crystal and his memories with it, and he didn't have so long until it was to be shown to the crowds at this ball. Time was crucial, and it was slipping between his fingers, and he didn't care and instead swung Sailor Moon across a ballroom filled with people not supposed to see that he was here, and it didn't make sense except for the fact he couldn't _not—_

She'd looked so sad. He'd had to. And now he couldn't let go.

He didn't know what that feeling was.

He didn't know what it was later, either. When Princess D had been possessed by the Dark Kingdom, fleeing with his price, and he couldn't care less, because he needed to keep Sailor Moon safe. His entire form trembling in the effort to not let her fall, not let her slip.

He didn't know her, not really (except he _knew _that he did), and here he was willing to fall for her in the most literal sense (and probably the figurative one, too, who was he even kidding?)

But he knew he needed to protect her. Nothing more in the world than that. Not finding a Crystal, not listening to some princess in his dreams. More than anything, he needed to keep Sailor Moon safe.

Somewhere along the lines, his priorities had shifted.

It was her who protected them, then. Something as elegant as an opened umbrella that made them glide softly to the grass, his arms around her.

Her small smile and flushed cheeks and curling eyelashes as she flicked her eyes back up to him when they'd not died after all, it seemed, and he suddenly understood what the feeling was, and it made the pounding in his heart even more unbearing.

_May I have more than this dance?_

Her smile slipped into astonishment when he leaned down with wide, shocked eyes, and she leaned up. Slipped into open wonder when he tilted her face up by a single gloved finger to her chin and gazed into eyes that he knew he should ought to be recognizing, eyes he felt might have the answer to everything he'd ever asked.

And then her eyes fluttered shut and shut him out, and he leaned in to have her lips instead. And maybe he was wrong — maybe it wasn't her eyes that held his answers, maybe it was her kiss, if he kissed her long enough.

Or the sigh she whispered into his mouth, or the way her lips brushed against his more and more insistently, or the way she opened her mouth to him and he felt like drowning, or the way her hands tightened against his back and his hand slipped along her face into her hair and the pearls and the way it just all felt so _familiar _and like this was where he finally belonged and—

It was a terrible idea. They might be enemies. Sailor Moon was after exactly the same thing he was after.

But he was also in love with her, and so he kissed her some more, kissed her until her lips were swollen and he was chased away by a magical talking cat, completely missing his chance to find what was perhaps a magical crystal they both sought.

She didn't protest.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Classic (specifically, Episode 22)
> 
> So, for this last kiss I decided to re-create the first canon kiss in a way that I liked better (since, ya know, that one didn't age well in EITHER version, anime or manga!) So, have this instead!
> 
> (Also, I wrote almost all the kisses with my dancing Usamamo statue sitting on my desk keeping me inspired - so it's only fitting they appear in the final one!)
> 
> Anyway! This is it! 50 kisses, here they finally are! Thank you to everyone who has supported me through this, and for everyone who's still reading this: I would love to hear what you think! They are all set throughout canon and can all be viewed as moments within this canon stories - the Silmil ones especially are all glimpses into the same narrative, at different points in time. I know these kisses are short individually, but I hope you can value these stories as the big narrative they represent (or just the small moments they show, too!)
> 
> I really hope you enjoyed this, and I would love to hear if you did! It's been a somewhat rocky road for me (and I'll admit I'm somewhat wary to try a daily posting thing again in the future, ngl - it's really been up and down for me!) But THANK YOU to everyone who encouraged me when I was down about these! Thank you to everyone who took and takes the time to review my writing and lets me know it's appreciated, and thank you for the MANY LOVELY PEOPLE who supported me so fully when I asked my very rude daily anon on tumblr to please stop telling me these kisses are trash day in and day out - the response to that was overwhelming and I felt so, so, so loved.
> 
> I do have a few "spares" left - sometimes I wrote a prompt twice, but for this of course then only chose one version. I'm contemplating whether or not to add these bonus kisses onto here as well (or if that's silly), but I'll probably let them sit for a while and think it through, and take a few days off. It's been a ride, and thank you for everyone who rode it with me!


	51. Bonus Kiss: A Second Kiss In Danger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year guys! Daikon and Queen Risa are currently binge-reviewing through these kisses and it made me so happy I felt like posting one of the bonus kisses lol.
> 
> This one is one of the "doubles" I wrote and then didn't post. Meaning, when I wrote a prompt twice. This one because it didn't quite fit my other ones, and so it flew out.
> 
> Anyway, the reason this one doesn't quite fit is because this fic can be read in pretty much almost direct continuation of my fic 'Harmless' in the Little Moments Series, which is in my Catalyst universe (and you know, same as almost pretty much all my silmil). (For those who don't remember it: It's the one with the bonfire and the language barrier where Serenity snuck onto Earth during a festival to see some RL.) So yeah, it still goes in harmony with all my silmil here, but yeah… anyway! I hope you have fun with this!

* * *

A Second Kiss In Danger

* * *

Endymion was the one who convinced her; the one who tempted her, the one who made this all spiral out of control so frighteningly fast.

She'd touched fire – and the fire had come back to claim her.

She'd never stood a chance.

It froze her and it boiled her, and nothing would be the same after her foolery the night before.

* * *

The state visit had been promised to be a dire, uncomfortable affair from the start. These golden halls reflected nothing of the bonfires and dancing bodies sweating delightfully around it that she hadn't been allowed a glimpse of the night before but snuck off to see anyway. The tight ball gowns and crinolines and stiff collars a mockery of the loose and lively way of life she'd seen the night before. This whole political spiel between hardened fronts a farce she was forced to carry out with proper smiles and the exact right angle of curtsies paraded in front of her as to not be offending and yet not held in too high regard.

Even without her taste of unreachable freedom the night before, she would have hated this event, and now it kind of broke her heart.

The Crown Prince was late and the room treated it as if it were a declaration of war – and she had to bite the inside of her cheeks and clench her fists to keep from rolling her eyes because this was just all so, so...

They'd been expecting her mother, and yet the Moon sent her instead and it was regarded as a slight and it all made her so tired.

And then _he _walked in, ink-black hair falling into bluest eyes and lips that soft, soft curve, and she drew in a breath so startled it alarmed Mercury beside her, but she couldn't–

Oh god.

Fast stride in through the golden double wing doors, heavy armor around his hips, heavy boots on his feet, the stride of someone absolutely irritated.

He swept in with a glum expression and his brow in fierce frustration reflecting everything she'd felt and her heart stopped, then started, then tried to kill her from her chest outward.

_Oh no_ _–_

Oh no. What was he doing here? Why was he–

Was he one of the lords? Oh god, was he one of the _Shitennou_? Would he expose her? Would he–

(And… deep down, the traitorous oh _yes _— the traitorous leaps her heart made at the memory of his lips on hers, his wide, surprised eyes when she'd kissed him, the taste of him still in her mouth, and _Oh__–_)

And then it all got so much worse.

"His Royal Highness, the Crown Prince Endymion of Elysion, Heir to the Golden Kingdom".

No.

No. No. No.

That didn't happen. That couldn't… But her heart started hammering in a way she'd never felt before, the shock so deep, so panicked, so…

It was him. The taste still on her lips was his. The harmless man she'd kissed had never been harmless at all. The man she'd come to visit and had no interest in meeting at all was the man she'd stolen a kiss from the night before.

The boy with the caged eyes and the velvet voice was the Crown Prince of the Golden Kingdom and she'd tasted his tongue as she snuck out and pretended to be someone she was not, and apparently, he'd done the same.

They stood on equal grounds, she wasn't raised above him. Another slight, and yet she wanted to step up and make it even worse.

Wanted to take his hand and dance like they'd danced the night before. Wanted to hear that voice.

She froze, wide-eyed. Everything around her she perceived as if walking through molasses, time stilling, time waiting, time _beating_. She was both terrified to meet his eyes and find the recognition and terrified he wouldn't look at all, and when his eyelashes blinked up to her she saw the second that shock claimed him, too, as if it were happening in slow motion.

"Her Royal Highness, the Crown Princess Serenity of the Moon, Heir to the Silver Millennium Empire."

His expression would have been priceless, would have been–

But there was nothing at all funny about this situation.

He stood paralyzed. Eyes wide and growing wider and bugging out his head until they broke into a craze and rove over her form, her hair, her dress, her lips – and then fell onto the unhidden insignia on her forehead and rested there.

He didn't bow. He didn't take her hand to kiss it as would be the custom. He stood frozen and people around them started to murmur and oh _no__–_

Of all the people.

Of all the people he might have been.

Of all the people to fall in— no. She couldn't even think it. He had to have been the most forbidden of them all.

The murmur grew louder, agitated, nervous and skittish and she could feel it – she could feel the way her Senshi's stance widened and his guards so suddenly stood more alert and the lords' and ladies' looks to each other that grew in fear and—

He broke out of it. His voice broke but it was the same velvet – except now it spoke to her in fluent, High Lunarian with a thick, beautiful accent and she could suddenly understand him, and it shuddered and shot through her.

"A— a pleasure to meet you, Your Royal Highness," he croaked, polite and with the right bow and under the intense eyes of the most important people in the kingdom in a too brightly lit hall and it broke the tension in the room even when it sky-rocketed hers.

His hand trembled when he lifted her palm a little higher to kiss it, and it coursed through her and strangled her.

She wanted him to speak in tongues she couldn't understand again. So she could pretend some more...

Even though that was exactly what they did. Pretend. Not to be free, mind you.

But they pretended. They started pretending in a way they would always have to pretend, from this day on.

There were no dances around bonfires in their future. There shouldn't have been in their past.

"I hope your stay has been pleasant, Your Highness," he said, even when his eyes were screaming at her.

She licked her lips. "It has," she rasped out, and his eyes reacted to her words perhaps much like hers had to his - that mix of wonder and regret, the loss of last night's magic when they only had their hands and feet and lips to speak but not a single word. "Your world has been most interesting so far," she trailed off.

His eyes reacted again, but he nodded curtly, and they flicked out around the crowd. "Has Your Royal Highness been shown the palace gardens, yet?" he asked, stilted and performed. "They're most pleasant this time of year."

Small talk for the eyes. Torturous, painful.

"I… haven't had the pleasure yet, no," she squeaked. "But I'm sure I will."

His inhales were harsh. His exhales harsher. And somehow, they made it.

When she was dismissed, he fled from her, yet the masses were sated. No war had been started over their words, and he conversed with her Senshi in equally stiff manners, introduced them to his Shitennou, then spoke to the lords and ladies in her attendance and they in turn to the lords and ladies of his.

It was excruciating and it didn't end and he stayed as far away from her as possible as he could and all she could see across the room were those lush lips that had tasted of honey wine and freedom when in reality he was just as caged as her.

It was later, when she was being shown the art of their ancestors and one of the dukes of the High Lands to the North that lulled her in with stories of almost comical grandeur that she had trouble following, trouble not getting distracted from, that he appeared out of nowhere from the shadows.

He reached out a hand, and pulled her behind a statue and down a hallway hidden from direct view, past thick deep red velvet curtains and golden brocade that turned steadily darker and barer and simpler and her heart hammered in her chest because she would follow him everywhere even if he were to kidnap her right now and never give her back.

Her heartbeat picked up. He'd stolen her mid-sentence. His duke would wonder where she'd disappeared to, might come after them to investigate, might follow the maze he'd walked into what she supposed were now the servant's wings.

He was tall.

She had to look up when he stepped right into her personal space, closer than would ever have been appropriate for the Crown Prince of Earth and the Crown Princess of the Moon, and his hair fell into his eyes when he stooped down to search hers.

"You're not Venusian," he breathed at her, that accent wrapping around every word and pulling at her.

"I'm not," she managed, wide-eyed.

"You kissed me," he said, and it was an accusation, and also full of wonder, and his eyes moved closer to her still.

She licked her lips as if she could still taste him, she couldn't help it, and her eyes flew to his own lips and she couldn't help but notice the way they moved under her attention. "I did," she murmured like a confession to a crime, and she supposed it had been.

"Why?" he asked, and she frowned.

She tilted her head up in confusion. "Because I wanted to…"

His eyes grew a little harder. "Did you know who I am?"

And with that her eyes widened. Did he think—

Did he think this was all a scheme? That she was playing him? That this was some intricate plan to… to what?

"No," she said harshly, hurt lacing her words. "I… I wouldn't have if I'd… if I'd known."

And then his eyes flashed again. Really, even though his features were such a trained mask, his eyes were incredibly expressive. Honest and fierce and like a boy's who hoped too much.

They danced at her in calculation, in hurt, … and in want.

He was staring at her lips, again. Was still standing way too close, his hand hovering near her hip and yet not touching.

She could do nothing but stare helplessly back.

"Do you still want to?"

His words rung between them, instigation to a crime, and they made her shiver and yearn and _stare _at him and–

She stood on her tiptoes, her hands curling against his tunic, around his neck, into the softest of hair she'd ever touched, and his lips still tasted like honey wine.

Treason tasted way too sweet.

"I really do," she whispered into his mouth as fire claimed her.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Silver Millennium. (Specifically: a directsequel to "Harmless" in the Little Moments Series)


	52. Bonus Kiss: A Second Jealous Kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I mentioned on tumblr I had some kisses left unposted (and I still do) and how it no longer felt like they were worth posting. Some people wanted me to post them anyway. So here, I looked over three out of the bunch, so here you have a few all at once. I'll see if I view another discarded ones too, and maybe post those too if I don't cringe too hard lol? This first one is an alternate version again, and the only alternate version I also previously posted on tumblr a while ago.
> 
> Anyway, these are still unbeta-ed, so forgive mistakes!

* * *

A Second Jealous Kiss

* * *

"Do you think it's ever wrong to tell someone how you feel?"

The moment the words had left her mouth she wanted to pluck them back out of the air. What was she thinking? She'd left her heart unguarded and words came out that weren't safe to even think yet, let alone let out.

She gripped her milkshake to hide behind it and flushed, unyieldingly facing up front and not to her side.

When Mamoru didn't speak for a while, she exhaled in a soothing, calming way. Apparently, he hadn't even heard.

He calmly turned a page in the big smart-people book his head was stuck in, his coffee cup untouched. Minutes passed, then he turned another.

And so it jolted all the jitters back into her when he spoke.

"…Who do you want to tell how you feel, Odango?"

She dared to turn her head, mouth stretched into an awkward grimace that smoothed over when she found him still facing his book.

And didn't he sound a little… strange?

She lowered her eyebrows, regarded him with a frown. Another page was turned.

"Yes," he spoke into his book, as if no time had passed, as if he simply answered a question not so very belatedly, as if he hadn't asked a question back in turn and she hadn't answered it at all, and his voice sounded even stranger, "sometimes it's wrong."

He sounded… stubborn.

She felt her mouth pinch into a distasteful little nub.

"Right," she managed, and turned back to mask the disappointment that pooled in her stomach and to fill it with strawberry milkshake instead.

Another page turned. Somewhere behind them she heard Motoki laugh. The sound of coffee cups clinking against saucers, the rumble of the milk foamer, the small hum of hushed conversation around.

She sighed and sucked noisily on her straw.

With a thud, his heavy book was closed.

Usagi stubbornly faced her milkshake, studiously watched her appointed water-drop champion lose its condensation race down the side of her glass to the drop next to it. The rustle of clothes and the scrape of metal against linoleum indicated he'd gotten up, and her shoulders turned stiff.

He'd stopped right beside her.

"Usagi?"

She nearly choked at the rare use of her actual name, and turned her head.

His was leaning half into her and half toward the counter, towering over her even when she sat on an elevated stool, and his hand was drumming impatient, irritated rhythms against the surface.

And then her heart stopped, because he leaned down to _kiss_ her. A soft peck to her cheekbone, somewhere between her temple and below her eye; as if he'd missed her cheek, the barest brush of his lips against her skin as if he was afraid to actually touch it… Nothing more, nothing less…

And she was left to stare in wide-eyed shock and, and, and… wait, _what_?

His look was… he looked _sad_. And nervous. There was the barest brush of color on his cheeks even when his face looked almost painfully neutral. Then he cleared his throat, took a step back.

"Don't tell anyone how you feel, ok?" he mumbled, then turned to leave.

She must have looked completely frozen. She _felt_ completely frozen.

He stepped around her, buried his hands in his pockets, and his parting words shook her to the core.

"Not until I get the chance to prove I'm not the jerk you think I am, ok?"

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Classic
> 
> (Because yes still here to give them some more pre-reveal chemistry!)
> 
> Anyway, I'm posting two more rando-kisses of my sitting-there pile right away. These were all from the discarded pile, so… I do hope you like them at least a little lol. These were all the ones I was never sure about, hence the 'bonus' now. Take them as deleted scenes, I guess?


	53. Bonus Kiss: A Drunk Kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is a rather random T-ranges-testing bonus kiss: One I'd written because it popped out midway, but it didn't have a prompt, because that prompt list didn't want any drunk kisses. But here, have it anyway!

* * *

A Drunk Kiss

* * *

Usually, Tuxedo Mask wasn't that uncoordinated. Though to be fair, usually the world didn't spin that much on him, either. He was so drunk it wasn't even funny anymore.

He stumbled, falling over the balcony with one foot catching at the railing and shrieked gracelessly, turning as to not fall onto his precious cargo in his arms.

She made little more than a grunt, pressing her soft hands further into his shoulders and neck, her heated, flushed cheeks brushing against his face in overtly cuddly motions.

He fought a little with his balcony door - the usually so easy mechanism suddenly felt like it needed advanced engineering to get it open, and carried Usagi inside, little sequined party jacket and smudged red lipstick and all, and collapsed with her on the bed in purest, undiluted relief.

He'd boasted they'd be fine. Who cares that they'd missed last train, he'd carry her home, the distance was nothing.

Turns out he was kind of an overconfident drunk who lost his sense of direction altogether.

Her voice was muffled against his shoulder and he adjusted his hold on the back of her head a little so she could move it up just that bit to his throat and he could hear her.

"Inside," she mumbled, rubbing against him. And then something he wouldn't have understood if he didn't have very thorough training in understanding Usagi when there was something blocking her mouth.

'You don't have to hide my face anymore', it was, or something along those lines.

Oh.

He unlocked his hold around her head and let his arms drop limbly to his sheets with a harsh exhale.

Everything was totally spinning.

"Detransform?" she mouthed against his throat, the red of her lipstick surely painting him colorfully, and he grunted and did as she told.

The magic fluttered beneath her, but she didn't move a muscle, dropped on top of him like dead weight.

"I'm never gonna drink again," he moaned, all fours stretched out and Usagi still clutching at him.

"You say that every year," she mumbled at his throat.

"I mean it every year."

"...mhm," her sleepy voice hummed, the vibration catching against him pleasantly.

"I really hate Minako's birthday parties."

"Mhm," she said, and started moving in slow, arching, languid ways, and started to kiss up his throat with an open mouth and her hot tongue, then down to his collar, ripping at his buttons with clumsy fingers to get at his chest, and he let it all happen with too deep breaths and closed eyes.

"I forgot my shoes," he complained. "And my jacket."

"Mhmm," she hummed again, and dragged her teeth down his collarbone, then her lips, dropping lingering, suggestive kisses.

Her fingers were surprisingly nimble and fast as she unbuttoned his shirt all the way blindly.

"I'm too drunk," he moaned, arching against her mouth on his skin in ways absolutely counter-argumentative to what he was saying.

"Me too," she agreed against his navel, and he shuddered.

"My head is swimming. Whoever said this was supposed to feel light? I feel so heavy."

"Mhmm." Her lips against his hipbones, wet and hot and addictive where her tongue had dipped against the dimples in his skin, her hands at his belt.

"This is awful."

She stopped, and he ripped his eyes open and moved for the first time since he'd collapsed in the bed, propping himself awkwardly up at his elbows to look down at her.

"No!" he protested too loudly, too drunkenly. "Keep going!"

She looked absolutely alcohol-flushed, and absolutely gorgeous, glitter make-up smudged around her sparkling, suggestive, lit eyes.

She lowered herself back on him, moved her mouth back on his skin and dipped her tongue against him and he sighed, her lips smirking, stretched against his abs, and he collapsed back down to her lips brushing against the ridges between the muscles.

"Hmm," he hummed, letting the heaviness claim him.

He tried to get her shoes off her, kicking at them with one leg halfheartedly, contemplated whether to move and try to get her out of her little party jacket - the sequins scratched against his torso a little uncomfortably when they caught against his nipples, but decided it was entirely too much work. He kicked at her foot, trying to nudge his socked toes into her shoe to get it off - she was wearing ballerinas, how could this be so hard? And sighed in relief when he heard the plop of her second shoe finally landing on the floor.

She sighed again in that way she made when she wanted him real bad, and rubbed her flushed cheeks and face against his chest, dropping sloppy kisses against his skin all the way.

He frowned, but kept his eyes closed, his whole body back to unmoving. "You're rubbing all that glitter on me, aren't you?" he accused.

"I am, yes."

"Hm."

The bed would be full of glitter again. He wouldn't get it fully out for weeks, _again_.

But really, this time, he couldn't bring himself to care. Sighed and bit the side of his lip when she managed to get his belt open.

They'd been making out on Minako's couch when they got kicked out after all. Better continue that in full.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Post-Stars.
> 
> In fact, narratively this is definitely after one of my other stories, too: Tequila Makes Your Clothes Fall Off, in the Lemon Tree series.
> 
> Anyway, absolutely established relationship here, and in the real world, make sure you and your partner have talked how to work consent in abbreviated states. (Sex educator voice off now, lol, sorry.)


	54. Bonus Kiss: A Second Forceful Kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another alternate version I originally wrote for the Forced Kiss prompt. I ultimately decided against it because the Silver Millennium storyline seemed more popular.
> 
> Anyway, remember episode 93 in S? It's the one where Usagi feels she's absolutely lacking in all departments from cookie-baking to anything, tries to improve herself on all accounts and follows Michiru around in this episode where she is introduced and Usagi compares herself to her endlessly. (And on top of that, we had Luna's speech how Mamoru might leave her one day and it'll all be her fault because she's not willing to approve.) It all got (somewhat?) resolved by the end of the episode of course (and even way earlier, Mamoru was absolutely sweet this episode actually!), but well, I wanted to dabble in it too I guess lol.

* * *

A Second Forceful Kiss

* * *

He looked down at the watch on his wrist, leaned back against the white marble that made up the inner part of the big, imposing arch that was Keio's main entrance gates, and sighed. Usagi was late.

He had no idea in the first place why she'd insisted to pick him up today. Keio was out of her way. But one moment he'd chatted about some function a few of his co-eds had organised and wanted his help in this afternoon (with a subsequent casual dinner invite afterwards in one of the cheap eateries around which he'd hoped he might get to skip), and the next she'd insisted she come pick him up.

Which was half an hour ago.

He turned a page on his book, not completely paying attention to it, but not completely disregarding it for his surroundings either. Just a more or less subconscious scan for loud and bubbly and bright colors and odangos.

So, he nearly jumped when she started speaking right next to him and he hadn't seen her.

"I'm so sorry, Mamo-chan…" she said, her voice absolutely, completely mournful.

But his eyes bugged out of his head more at the way she looked than the dejected tone of her voice.

No wonder he hadn't seen her.

He almost dropped his book.

Her hair was… Her hair was wrong.

Her hair was piled together in a low, messy bun at the back of her head, _all of it_. No long streamers of hair, no odangos. It was as if she'd… wait, had she cut if _off_?!

He stared at her in horror.

And it didn't even stop there. No brightly colored mini-skirt, no cute hopping into his arms. She was wearing dark jeans and a navy colored sweater that was a bit too large on her, and her hands very tightly clasped in front of her. Even her make-up was different. Less.

She was completely _wrong_.

"I really tried to be on time this time," she said towards her feet.

"What's going on?" he shot out breathlessly.

Her eyes shot up. "Nothing!"

His chest clenched. Where was her _hair_?

Immediately, his mind tried to go over what he might have done wrong this time. This was about yesterday, wasn't it? The burnt cookies? Her self-conscious cries that she wasn't good enough for him? But he'd eaten every last cookie, and he'd promised her he loved her exactly as she was.

Because he did. And this wasn't her.

"This is about yesterday, isn't it?" he shot out again, still staring.

She frowned down at herself. "Don't you like it?" she said meekly. "I did my best, but the girls wouldn't help me this time…"

He blinked. "What…?"

She pulled at her too big sweater again. This wasn't hers. Whose was it?

"You missed it because of me, didn't you?" she said with a deep sigh, and he blinked even harder.

Uh…

"The thing? Your co-eds going out to dinner afterwards?"

Uh…

"They're just down the road," he tried to assure her - carefully, almost pleadingly - because it really didn't look like he should pile any fails on her whatsoever, lest she go and dye her hair or something. "It's no big deal. They're saving us a seat."

"Oh!" she said, and snapped her head back up, and finally there was a smile in it, and a small glimpse of his Usako, and it constricted in his heart.

"Let's go then!" she cried, and pulled at his hand, and him down the steps.

He followed staring helplessly at that _wrong bun_.

It all got so much more bewildering when they actually arrived. When he introduced her to some of his co-eds and she was… she was quiet. Almost shy. She stood behind his shoulder and nodded and…

When someone asked her what she was doing, she said she was still in school and hoping to do well there. That she was going to do her best from now on to be worthy of someone who went to Keio.

He nearly choked on his Ramen.

What was it? What had he done wrong?

"Excuse me?!" he screeched, and her eyes widened.

His co-eds looked on strangely. His voice had gotten a bit too loud. As if something in him rebelled to compensate for all this _wrong-ness_.

"'Worthy'?!" he spat out, and then, "You like video games and naps. You _hate _school," he told her wide-eyed, too loud, because he couldn't believe he had to _remind _her.

But her cheeks flushed in that way they used to do back when he was an idiot in the streets of Juuban and one of his foolish insults went a bit too far and it all died in his throat.

"I'm trying to do better," she told her bowl of Ramen.

And he realised then that she wasn't holding it up to her mouth, wasn't slurping the noodles with a blissful smile on her face and humming into her food as if it came straight from paradise. She was holding her chopsticks in the proper way and stabbing nothing with them, and she picked at her food like a bird.

What the _fuck _had he _done_?! _When _did he do it?

"I like video games, too," Saito-kun across from her said in a somewhat apologetic tone. Because there was a mood here and not only he was picking up on it, it was _there_.

Usagi flashed Saito a too small, too grateful smile and then _didn't start chattering about her favorite games_.

Something in his chest flared painfully.

"You don't have to do better," he almost barked.

She pursed her lips. "I really do," she pressed out towards her food.

"Do you not like it?" he said, too loud again, and around him chatter was dimming, heads were turning, and he nodded to her food. "We can go get something else if you don't like it. We can leave."

It was a rude thing to say so loudly, so openly. The chef was right there behind the counter.

He had no idea why she suddenly wanted to tag along to get-togethers with his co-eds anyway. He wasn't friends with any of these people. He really didn't want to go in the first place, had she not insisted to accompany him.

"No, I like it," she pressed out, flushing harder, flushing in the way she used to when she was so angry with him…

"We can go for milkshakes instead."

"I said I'm fine."

"_Usako_," he hissed.

With that, her eyes flashed up to him, and they were… they were _so sad_.

He froze.

But she broke out of it, licked her lips, and looked around the place. His eyes followed hers and he found her slumping in relief when she spotted the sign for the restrooms.

"Excuse me…" she mumbled, and then untangled herself from the small stool in a way he'd never seen her move.

He inhaled and exhaled harshly when she'd gone, tried to control his breathing, his irritation.

"Hey, are you guys—" Saito was saying.

Mamoru stood up abruptly, without replying, yanked his wallet from his pocket and threw some bills on the table, then grabbed both her purse and his book bag and left the table without saying goodbye.

The restrooms were just beyond the entrance.

He stood there restlessly, leg jiggling. She took a while. But when she emerged, he grabbed her arm, and pulled her, startled as she was, out of the restaurant.

Mita was busy this time of day. The buzz of opening izakayas in an area known for its many cheaper restaurants just behind them, the bright glare of neon signs for chain restaurants all around them, Tokyo Tower starting to glimmer against the light of the now almost dark blue sky.

"What are you doing?" His tone was absolutely appalled as he turned her toward him by the shoulders, still so way too loud.

"Nothing," she mumbled, and he kind of wanted to growl at her.

And so, he did. "What's wrong?" he growled out in the most concerned growl anyone had ever heard, he was sure of it.

The kind of frustration in it of a boy who was faced with perhaps losing what he found most precious about the girl he loved.

"You're pretending to be someone you're not," he accused.

She met his eyes. Her lips were downturned, her tone defeated. "You don't think I could be better?"

His heart _hurt _at that look.

"Usako!"

Her shoulders slumped and she sighed hard. "I am," she said, and his brows furrowed.

"Pretending," she elaborated.

"Why?" he shot out breathlessly, the growl gone but now left with all the concern.

She shrugged and looked to the side, and the neon light played off her golden hair.

People were making wide circles around them on the narrow pathway and throwing them looks, and for once, he really couldn't care less.

"You said you wanted to introduce Ami to one of your professors once. You never want to introduce me to anyone…"

He recoiled. "What?"

But she shook her head in consolation (it was so _wrong _with that hairstyle), put all the 'that's not it' into her expression, and yet…

"You always say such nice things about Ami, and now Michiru, too, and I…"

His eyes flashed.

"Luna said…"

"What did Luna say?" he almost growled.

She shook her head again with a sigh. "It doesn't matter."

"Oh, it _really _does…"

He left the sentence hanging, kept waiting, and finally Usagi looked back up, kept his gaze.

Why? Why did she look _so sad_?

She slumped back against the wall of the restaurant behind her, and he moved closer, bent down toward her, when her eyes once again threatened to stray. And so, he chased her gaze, moved with her eyes to stay in its trajectory.

"I don't know how to bake," she finally admitted in a small voice, and he frowned. So, this _was _about yesterday. But he'd _eaten all the cookies_, he _had_.

"And I don't know anything about gene-manipulitation. And I don't know how to wear a kimono the right way. And Luna is right, it'll be my fault when you look at me one day and don't want to be with someone like that anymore—"

He nearly choked on his saliva. _What_?!

"So I… so I wanted to try. To be better for you."

His heart was screaming.

"Why would you think I wanted you any different?" he asked, perhaps a bit too close now, and she had to crane her neck. Her cheeks turned just that little bit pink when he started to curl one of those stray little baby locks around his finger that had fallen out of her (wrong!) bun and curled around her face.

But her face was still in that too sad pout, her voice too quiet. "You keep complimenting what strong, independant and accomplished women my friends are."

The look he sent her must have looked incredulous, because she flushed and hurried to explain.

"I couldn't even transform on my own anymore. I needed your help even for that."

He shook his head now, wide-eyed. Wait, _what_?!

But she'd… she'd been _happy _about her new brooch and...

She turned her eyes to his chest, and he couldn't bend so low as to catch them there.

"You said you like strong women when you broke up with me."

All his breath left his lungs as if she'd punched it out of him.

"Usako…" he whimpered.

No.

His voice turned begging.

"Usako, I was talking deliberate bullshit and it didn't even make sense. You're the strongest woman in the fucking world," he begged.

She shrugged.

"Usako."

Her eyes were now back at that stupid, stupid wrong sweater she wore, and he had enough.

He reached forward and yanked at her bun.

Her eyes found his, startled, but he kept going.

When her hair cascaded down her shoulders finally, he couldn't keep out the breath of relief. She hadn't cut it. It was all there.

He leaned close, cradled her face, right there on that busy street in Mita, some of his co-eds in the window of the restaurant, watching, and shitdamn could he care less.

"I love you just the way you are," he repeated his words from yesterday, a bit harsher, a bit angrier, but nonetheless a promise. Leaned down towards her, and her eyes flashed in a small smile.

He forced her mouth up. Pulled at her face and pressed his lips to hers and kissed her way too harshly. A bit too deep, a bit too forward. Growled against her and dragged his teeth across her lower lip, and when he let go of her, her cheeks were flushed in a way he loved much better.

"Don't do that," he glared, his words puffing out against her reddened lips forcefully. "Give me my girl back now, ok?"

And then, finally, there between his hands, her cheeks dimpled and her eyes had her smile back.

"Ok," she breathed, precious face nodding between his tight grasp on it.

He sighed in relief.

"Milkshakes?" she asked with a sheepish smile, and his lips quirked up.

"Sure," he smiled.

"And can we get more food?" she smiled up, and he crushed her to him in a tight hug, her arms fluttering to his sides underneath too long sleeves.

"Sure," he said again into her hair, and breathed deeply. Relieved. So, so relieved.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: S (specifically, Episode 93)
> 
> Though I think it's not AS obvious here exactly. You know, by the time Super S rolled around Usagi was confident and secure in that relationship and had learned to trust him irrevocably. But early S? Episode 93 is 3 episodes into S. It's fresh, fresh, freshest post-break-up with canon not actually showing us any communication around the matter? Overall, this was where she was still quite insecure about them, jumping on Rei and Ami for flirting, etc, etc. She started S out with being terribly distraught about being the only person not being able to transform anymore, Mamoru made comments about not seeing her until she got her grades up, and she had that episode where she compared herself with Mamoru, and then the girls, and then Michiru, right here, and found herself lacking. So, this is here. She gotWAY more confident about herself and him and their relationship the longer they were together even if never as much as she did in the manga, and not to the point she didn't still think he'd just abandoned her in Stars, but she DID get better about it. (And besides, let's not forget they're pimple-nosed teenagers at this point! Both of them! Insecurity is kind of their job!).
> 
> Also, because while Mamoru was PERFECT in this episode, it didn't quite fit the things he's said in previous episodes, so I wanted some continuity. Anyway, I actually love that episode, and how secure she IS in the end, I just wanted to play it up a little, but in the end decided against it. But here you have it anyway, I guess lol.


	55. Bonus Kiss: A Second Kiss Without A Motive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's a random kiss I scrapped early on, because it really doesn't make all too much sense in canon. But I guess it didn't let me go, so, have it anyway?

* * *

A Second Kiss Without A Motive

* * *

A loud bang; plexiglass droplets, decorative blue styrofoam, and hundreds of floofiest plushies exploding from a wall of unfortunately ambushed crane game machines like the most adorable kind of confetti poppers, and Sailor Moon froze for a second as she watched Chiba Mamoru duck from the blast in the most peculiarly calm way.

"Sailor Moon!" Luna's voice called from somewhere behind her in that frustrated voice, in her 'the youma is _that _way, you absolute ditz'-voice, and the whole room suddenly got a bit warmer with Mars' cry of Fire Soul somewhere in the near vicinity.

She watched in strangely calm mesmerization as a little Tuxedo Mask plushy landed right by Mamoru's side, its little body and cape flopping onto the ground uselessly.

She moved in the wrong direction wholly involuntarily.

Around him, people were panicking. She knew the sight of it by now, could spot it immediately, the glassy eyes, the tense postures, the pale faces contorted into horror, the staccato breath and tremor, even if it still hurt a bit to see. People either completely frozen and ashen, their friends dragging them out or running without them in their single-mindedness, others screaming in terror as they ran and ran and ran almost without aim or thought, simply to get away. And yet, Mamoru did none of these things. He calmly looked around, shifted, slipped behind a collapsed arcade machine and made a slow path somewhere that was not the exit, and Sailor Moon was completely, absolutely confused.

In one swift motion, she was there, and grabbed his arm and slung herself around him and shifted his weight against her as if he weighed nothing, because superhero-strength was cool like that. She didn't waste a second to jump over a pair of destroyed colorful capcom machines with her cargo as if she were stepping over a pebble.

_Now_, he reacted. _Now_, his eyes widened, just as she pursed her lips and shifted him so she could grab around his knees.

_Damn_, that guy was tall.

"Um," he made.

Sailor Moon shrugged, jumped, and threw him a glare. "The exit is that way," she told his perplexed face pointedly.

"I… must have missed it," he said after a beat.

But his breath didn't come fast and he wasn't sweating and he was so _calm _it was unnerving and he didn't _look _like someone looked who just got into the middle of a youma attack, and—

Behind them, where he'd _just _hidden, a giant arm smashed the floor apart, and thunder crackled around its collapse because Jupiter had amazing aim.

Mamoru's brow didn't even twitch. And so Sailor Moon's brow scrunched up tighter as she studied him.

He had the audacity to crack a small smile. Half of one. One side of his obnoxiously pretty lips quirking up as he watched her face way too closely.

She cleared her throat, hopped over the destroyed automatic doors (thank _god _this wasn't Crown, she would have been _devastated_), and because she was stupid, she didn't let him go to help her friends fight a monster she really ought to concentrate on.

And he noticed.

"Than-nkk—" he started, and _this _time, he reacted - his air puffing out in a small gruntish kind of shriek, his arm around her shoulder flexing hard as he grabbed her tighter when she bent her knees and hefted them up into the air and onto the high pedestrian bridge across the road.

Only there, she put him back onto his feet.

He really smelled unfairly nice, and so she glared a little more.

(And of course that was when his small, way too pretty half smile turned just that little wider.)

"You're safe now," Sailor Moon said. She supposed it was a bit absurd, since just as she said it, thunder crashed into the building behind her and a giant youma arm threw a crane game machine through the air. (It rained some more plushies.)

But all that seemed a bit far away, because _Mamoru-baka _was smirking like that and stepping back into her personal space, and looking down at her too fondly, and it all made her chest flutter in a way that she was not accustomed to. In a way that was unwelcome. In a way that was _weird_.

Was he _always _this tall?

And so she glared a little harder.

"Thanks," he said, and it sounded… weirdly alluring with the way his lips and his eyes and his…

Wow, she hadn't thought Mamoru-baka could be … could be sexy. Could be anything other but… obnoxious. Arrogant.

"I think they might need your help there," he said, his eyes never leaving hers, and he _was _standing awfully too close, and sounding way too amused.

He wasn't scared. He wasn't phased. He was calm and flirting with Sailor Moon and treating her too familiarly. It didn't make sense, none of it made sense.

Least of all that _she _wasn't calm at all. That _her _heart was beating right out of her chest. Over _Mamoru-baka_, and it didn't make sense.

Neither did kissing him. Make any sense, that is. And yet, one second and she was on her toes, and did just that, because apparently she'd lost her mind. Because suddenly, she was leaning up, and pressed her lips against his warm ones. Just briefly, just barely, only long enough for him to part his in sudden surprise and puff a harsh breath back against hers.

Because it didn't make sense and she didn't know why she did it.

And she also didn't know why she did it again, right away. Curled her glove into that atrocious green jacket and pulled. Didn't know why he came down so willingly, didn't know why he responded like that, curled himself around her like that, but he did.

Behind her, a thin spray of fog and mist covered the whole area, and she pulled him a little harder against her mouth, sucked a bit more at his lips until hers felt warm and bruised.

She pushed him back way later than was appropriate. (But, ah well, she guessed none of this was appropriate. Like, at all.) Got to the fight way more dazed and out of it than should be allowed. Went through the motions with a stubborn, confused glare, and didn't notice that when Tuxedo Mask finally arrived, he was licking bruised lips as his eyes kept flicking back to her, maybe almost more confused than she was.

What had he even been _doing _here, Mamoru-baka, in a wrong arcade in the wrong part of town?

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious Setting Tag: Classic. (Tho I guess it can be anything, any AU you want it to be, too.)
> 
> (Anyway yes still in lovesquare mood and also I WANT MORE SAILOR MOON AND MAMORU INTERACTION and also, I will always try to give them more pre-reveal chemistry yes I will, lol.)


End file.
